The Campaign to Protect the Criminal Illegal Aliens

By Heather Mac Donald
November 18, 2010

The ongoing campaign by the illegal-alien lobby to block the deportation even of illegal-alien criminals is the lobby’s most unfathomable activity. It is also a reminder of the strength of its commitment to the evisceration of the immigration rule of law. As the Obama administration and the lame-duck Congress push for a partial amnesty, the background campaign against deporting criminal aliens reminds us that such intermediate measures as the DREAM Act belong to a larger agenda of destroying all existing penalties for illegal entry and presence.

For years, illegal-alien advocates have opposed any cooperation between local jail and prison officials, on the one hand, and federal immigration authorities, on the other, that could result in the detection and possible deportation of illegal-alien inmates. The ground of this opposition is rarely stated. Occasionally the advocates recycle the hoary argument that underlies sanctuary laws (those local ordinances which ban information sharing between all local government officials, especially the police, and ICE): That illegal-alien crime victims and witnesses will fail to cooperate with a police investigation if they think that their immigration status will be disclosed to ICE. The New York Times recently blasted jailhouse programs to identify illegal-alien inmates for “undermining . . . public safety.â€