Illegal aliens deport in masses

Chad Groening - OneNewsNow - 8/10/2009 4:30:00 AM

Thanks to a new policy, a Maryland county has seen a three- to four-fold increase in the number of illegal aliens apprehended in the county who are now on the path to deportation.

In 2008, Anne Arundel County initiated a policy which required that jail staff report all foreign-born inmates to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials within an hour of their arrest, rather than once a week in a large group. The Maryland Gazette also reported that ICE expressed interest in 170 county inmates in the first six months of 2009, almost twice as many as the 87 inmates who were detained in all of 2007.

Ira Mehlman is a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

"You have an increasing number of local governments who recognize the impact that mass illegal immigration is having on their communities, whether it's additional crime, whether its additional expenses," he notes. "And they're looking for some opportunity to deal with it at local level."

Mehlman laments the fact that the Obama administration recently released a memo of understanding which restricts the ability of government entities like Anne Arundel County from being able to deport illegal immigrants.

"They're basically telling them, 'You can only use this program to go after serious criminals' -- and this is taking a tool away from local government that desperately needs it," he contends. "Basically the Obama administration has been doing everything they can to undermine immigration enforcement because they have no interest in immigration enforcement."

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