Thread: Immigration holding filled

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Immigration holding filled


The U.S. border with Mexico is overwhelmed, federal officials said last week.

That's not a surprise to anyone who has lived or worked along the international boundary.

What is startling are two factors that were announced: the number of non-Mexican illegal immigrants increased significantly in the past fiscal year, and there isn't enough room in prisons to hold these non-Mexican illegals once they're caught.

Even scarier, the Border Patrol has been releasing these non-Mexican illegal immigrants because of the lack of cells.

It's absurd to think that someone who has broken the law and been caught can't be held until they're deported. But the staggering apprehension numbers have surpassed what the system can handle.

David Aguilar, the chief of the U.S. Border Patrol and former chief of the agency's Tucson Sector, told a congressional hearing last week that since Oct. 1, 2004, the start of the 2005 fiscal year, federal agents have apprehended 98,000 non-Mexicans illegally entering the country.

In the 2004 fiscal year, the agency caught 75,371 non-Mexican illegal immigrants.

The Border Patrol has apprehended 812,000 illegal border-crossers in the current fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30.

The knowledge that a good portion of illegal immigrants who are apprehended are released on good faith to return to court is an absurd way of doing business. But it's just how our nation is doing business.

To link this to an example, just think about when someone is fishing and catches and releases a fish. More than likely, you're not going to see the same fish again.

The chances are authorities are not going to have an easy time finding these non-Mexican illegal immigrants again.

Why would they want to return to a courtroom and get booted out of our nation?

The Border Patrol's solution is to speed up removing these people from the nation. This is an ideal solution so no more holding facilities have to be built.

But if the number of non-Mexican illegal immigrants continues to increase, what then?

We urge the federal government to quickly solve this problem. Without it, the illegal immigration problem grows, threats to our nation's security increase and the problems become even more complex to solve.

We urge the federal government to quickly solve this problem. Without it, the illegal immigration problem grows, threats to our nation's security increase and the problems become even more complex to solve.

Yes, now if we could only get some legislators to figure this out.