Thread: Napolitano defends ICE immigration memo

Napolitano defends ICE immigration memo

By Liz Goodwin | The Lookout – 3 hrs ago

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano rebuffed accusations from Republican senators today that the Obama administration is attempting to bypass Congress to secretly allow young illegal immigrants to stay in the country.

Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa asked Napolitano if President Obama was attempting to implement "mass amnesty" administratively, by staying deportations for certain classes of illegal immigrants.

"There is no mass amnesty here," Napolitano said.

Napolitano testified before the Senate Judiciary committee to push for the passage of the Dream Act, a 10-year-old bill that would allow young people who were brought into the country by their parents as children to become citizens if they join the military or go to college. The bill passed the House but died in the Senate last December.

Grassley and GOP Texas Sen. John Cornyn questioned Napolitano closely over a new memo released by ICE chief John Morton, which emphasizes that the government's priority is to deport dangerous criminals. The memo also tells ICE agents to take "particular care and consideration" when illegal immigrants are veterans, elderly, ill, have been in the country for a long time, or are victims of crimes. Immigration experts say the memo just re-states ICE's previously articulated priorities, but immigration hawks and ICE's union leaders have derided the memo as "backdoor amnesty."

"I think he could not be more wrong." Napolitano said of union leader Chris Crane who criticized ICE's policies as amnesty.

"And I don't know where he gets his information, but the enforcement record of this administration is unparalleled. We have enforced the law. We have improved the removal of criminal aliens, and we have removed more people from the country and we've been criticized for that. But it's our belief that enforcement of immigration law is very important."

The Obama administration deported a record-breaking 392,000 illegal immigrants in fiscal year 2010, half of them with no criminal records. (Over-staying a visa is considered a civil offense, while crossing the border into the United States without papers is a misdemeanor crime.)

Napolitano also said that ICE is working on developing a system to "allow us to identify as early as possible people who are caught up in the removal system who in the end do not fit our removal priorities." A Department of Homeland Security official told The Lookout Napolitano is referring to their efforts to create a "a streamlined process to identify individuals who have been entered into removal proceedings and do not match ICE's removal priorities." It would help ICE focus on removing "criminal aliens, repeat immigration violators, fugitives and recent illegal border crossers," the official said.

Dr. Clifford Stanley, the Department of Defense's under secretary of personnel readiness, also testified at the hearing that the military strongly supports the Dream Act. He said 25,000 non-citizens serve in uniform, and that allowing more young immigrants to join the military would open up recruiting opportunities for the armed services.

Last week, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Jose Vargas revealed in the New York Times that he's been living in the United State for nearly 20 years as an illegal immigrant, after he was sent to the United States by his mother as a child. He is now advocating for the Dream Act and immigration reform.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/nap ... 14031.html

We have refusal to enforce our laws by the Executive branch. Not much to do here but impeach the Chief Executive.

Sure Napolitana supoports the memo. Its thhe Obama dog and pony act. There needs to be a congressional movement to pass and over ride any Obama dictate so that laws get enforces and illegals get deported no matter how old or young they are. Undocumented...then get them out of our communities.

Napolitano endorses DREAM Act in Senate testimony

by Jim Cross/KTAR (June 28th, 2011 @ 10:22am)

WASHINGTON -- Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has testified in support of the DREAM Act, a proposed path to citizenship for illegal immigrants who were brought into the United States as children.

"The criteria are far more strict than the normal criteria used in the naturalization or legalization process," Napolitano told the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees and Border Security on Tuesday.

She referred to requirements for education and military service that young people would have to meet before they would be eligible for citizenship. She said she supports the DREAM Act as currently written.

Napolitano's opinion was countered by Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, who said the DREAM Act does nothing to fix the broken immigration system.

"Maybe worse, it will provide an incentive for future illegal immigration," Cornyn said.

He engaged in a testy exchange with Napolitano, asking about her testimony that removing DREAM Act students from the country really doesn't make sense. Cornyn told Napolitan she was not answering his question, she suggested she didn't understand it, then the two agreed that "maybe we need to continue the dialogue."

Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Undersecretary of Defense Clifford Stanley joined Napolitano in voicing the Obama administration's support for the DREAM Act, which has failed to pass Congress several times since 2001.

Cornyn and fellow Republican, Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, said they want more border security in exchange for their support of the bill.

http://ktar.com

Sen. Cornyn Confronts Napolitano Over 'Backdoor Amnesty' Controversy

Alana Goodman

June 28, 2011

During a hearing on the DREAM Act today, Sen. John Cornyn confronted Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano about whether her agency directed its attorneys to dismiss the deportation cases of illegal immigrants who had been convicted of crimes.

The exchange was prompted by a Houston Chronicle investigation yesterday, which revealed that DHS’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials encouraged attorneys to seek dismissals for dozens of illegal immigrants who had been convicted of criminal acts ranging from sexual assault, kidnapping, assault, theft, drug dealing and DUIs.

“In 2010, I wrote you a letter and asked you for details with regard to this program,â€

Added an article from above to the Homepage:
http://www.alipac.us/article-6375--0-0.html

Cornyn presses Napolitano over immigration case dismissals


By SUSAN CARROLL
Copyright 2011 Houston Chroncle

June 28, 2011, 11:30PM

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on Tuesday rebuffed reports that her agency misled Congress and the public last year about a wave of immigration case dismissals in Houston and other cities, chalking the controversy up to internal "miscommunication."

Pressed by Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, to explain discrepancies between the agency's internal records and public statements about the dismissals, Napolitano said the Houston field office "conflated two different memos" released by ICE director John Morton and "misconstrued" agency policy.

"The plain fact of the matter is that a miscommunication occurred at the regional level in one of 26 offices," Napolitano testified during the hearing Tuesday in Washington before a Senate subcommittee on immigration and border security.

But the answer did not satisfy Cornyn, whose staff reviewed more than 200 pages of internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement records on the dismissals obtained by the Houston Chronicle.

"When an agency not only misleads the public and Congress, but also attempts to block public information, merely citing an unfortunate 'miscommunication' is not a good enough explanation for the American people," Cornyn said in statement after the hearing.

The internal agency records show that the chief ICE counsel in Houston ordered attorneys on Aug. 12 to review all new and thousands of pending cases on Houston's immigration court docket and to dismiss those that fail to meet with the agency's top priorities. The secretive review resulted in hundreds of case dismissals in Houston involving mainly illegal immigrants who had lived in the U.S. for years without committing serious crimes.

The records show the Houston efforts were praised as "outstanding" by top ICE attorneys at agency headquarters in Washington D.C. and held up internally as a model until news of the dismissals was first reported in the Houston Chronicle on Aug. 25.

That day the agency quietly rescinded the memo, and told reporters who inquired about the dismissals that they affected a very narrow group of immigrants with pending green card applications described in a separate agency memo, dated Aug. 20.

The agency made the same claim to Congress in December in response to questions from Cornyn and other GOP members of the Judiciary Committee, which accused the agency of selectively enforcing the nation's immigration laws.

However, the internal records show the Houston dismissals were not confined to green card applicants, as the agency insisted, and instead involved immigrants with a wide range of backgrounds, including some with criminal records for mostly misdemeanor offenses.

Through Aug. 24, ICE officials in Houston had already reviewed 1,924 cases and filed motions to dismiss 246. An internal ICE memo shows the actual number of cases in which local ICE attorneys exercised prosecutorial discretion was actually much higher by the end of October, however, involving about 445 cases.

Napolitano's office declined to clarify on Tuesday which two memos she said the Houston office "conflated."

Tre Rebstock, the president of the local ICE union, called Napolitano's testimony that the dismissals were confined to Houston "bogus."

"We've seen all the documentation, the memos and the emails," he said, describing top attorneys in ICE headquarters as "applauding the actions of the chief counsel in Houston."

"There was no miscommunication," he said.

The agency's internal records show the head of the Houston office, Gary Goldman, notified headquarters of his plans to conduct the docket review last August. His supervisor responded: "Outstanding, Gary," and asked him to share details of the Houston effort on the next conference call for chief counsels.

The agency's internal records show other ICE offices also were encouraged to exercise prosecutorial discretion — the power to decide which cases to pursue - in an effort to better target dangerous criminals for deportation.

Nationally, the number of immigration cases dismissed last fiscal year grew by about 40 percent, with courts scattered across the country reporting major increases.

Napolitano said at the hearing Tuesday that immigration officials are trying to find ways to determine whether immigrants meet with the agency's top priorities before entering them into removal proceedings. She did not provide details on the effort, which a DHS official said is still in the works.

Geoffrey Hoffman, the director of the University of Houston immigration clinic, urged the public to give DHS the benefit of the doubt on the Houston dismissals, saying the agency's own public affairs staff may not have known the truth behind the dismissals.

Hoffman said the bigger issue at stake is the agency's need to prioritize cases in order to target the most serious offenders.

"On one hand the public cries out for enforcement for the most dangerous criminals, and on the other hand, they have a problem with prosecutorial discretion," he said. "You can't have it both ways. There has to be a balance."

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/chr ... 31394.html

Did Democrats Stack Senate Hearing With Illegals?

June 28, 2011
134 comments
By Audrey Hudson

Granting citizenship to certain illegal immigrants under age 35 would give the economy a much-needed boost and fill millions of open jobs, key Obama administration officials told a Senate panel Tuesday...

Education Secretary Arne Duncan told a Senate Judiciary subcommittee that the U.S. will be short three million college graduates of what the market will demand in 2018 in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics...

The panel clashed with Republican lawmakers in front of a room Democrats packed with hundreds of young adults who themselves suggested they were not in the country legally.
"Let me ask everyone here today who is a DREAM Act student to stand and be recognized," said Sen. Dick Durbin (D. -Ill), the bill's sponsor.

Nearly everyone in the room stood up. HUMAN EVENTS contacted Durbin's press office after the hearing to ask if those in the audience Durbin recognized were in the country illegally, and are still awaiting a response.

http://nation.foxnews.com

Granting citizenship to certain illegal immigrants under age 35 would give the economy a much-needed boost and fill millions of open jobs, key Obama administration officials told a Senate panel Tuesday...

Why didn't anyone ask: where are these supposed "millions of jobs" that need filling? There are 27 MILLION unemployed AMERICANS, why the hell should even ONE of those jobs go to an illegal?

Education Secretary Arne Duncan told a Senate Judiciary subcommittee that the U.S. will be short three million college graduates of what the market will demand in 2018 in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics...

So their reasoning is that we need to support these "students" who are so much better than OUR kids? Give them MORE free education?

Let them go back to their home countries, get their education there... then apply to come here LEGALLY! I am NOT willing to pay for further education of people who have NO right to anything AMERICAN. Their twisted reasoning has my head ready to explode...

Napolitano, Obama and the rest of the dems want amnesty for illegal aliens to advance their socialist agenda. They say it is impossible to enforce 100% our immigration laws to deport thousands of illegals. Just enforce the laws, you dems. If you dems do not want to do your jobs, resign and other people will DEPORT ALL ILLEGALS. We do not want to hear that you cannot do your job (deport illegals). We have to vote all the dems out. They do not want to deport all illegals. It is time for Obama, Napolitano and the rest of dems to go. We do not need those people who do not do their jobs. DEPORT ALL ILLEGAL ALIENS AND NO, NO, NO, TO AMNESTY FOR ILLEGALS.