Thread: Chairmen Smith &Aderholt Write Secretary Napolitano Warn

Chairmen Smith and Aderholt Write Secretary Napolitano Warning Against "Administrative Amnesty" They Believe is Planned or Underway

By Micheal E. Hill
Wednesday, July 6, 2011 -- 7:00 pm EDT

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) and House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security Chairman Robert Aderholt (R-AL) have written to Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano accusing the Obama Administration of circumventing Congress by using executive branch authority to allow illegal immigrants to remain in the United States. The two chairmen demanded that the Secretary "halt any current or planned administrative actions that will result in mass legalization of illegal immigrants and that imply that immigration law should not be fully enforced." The two chairmen expressed their concerns in a July 5, 2011, five page-long letter that they sent to the Secretary and released to the public.

Chairmen Smith and Aderholt indicated in their letter that their concerns were first raised last year when an internal, unreleased memorandum on forms of administrative immigration relief available to the Administration was leaked to Congress. They indicate that their concerns were expanded with the release on June 17, 2011, of a memorandum on prosecutorial discretion from ICE Assistant Secretary John Morton and the release on the same date of a memorandum from ICE Assistant Secretary John Morton on prosecutorial discretion for victims of and witnesses to domestic violence. The two chairmen called the Morton memoranda, in particular, "a grossly irrresponsibile expansion of the use of prosecutorial discretion for the apparent purpose of administrative amnesty" and asserted that, "[u]ltimately, these memos could potentially make millions of deportable illegal and criminal immigrants eligible for administrative amnesty."

Chairmen Smith and Aderholt expressed concern in their letter "that DHS continues to use the excuse of 'limited resources' as a justification for its flagrant disregard of the law" and they requested that "ICE utilize the extensive resources available to rigorously enforce the immigration laws of the United States and that ICE's future budget requests include the funds necessary to effectively support the men and women of ICE in execurting their critical mission."

The Smith/Aderholt letter comes just two weeks after Chairman Smith sent a "Dear Colleague" letter to Members of the U.S. House of Representatives uring them to join him in cosponsoring the “HALT (Hinder the Administration’s Legalization Temptation) Actâ€

IMO, it will be a cold day in #$!! before Obama listens to anyone other than his handlers!