Illegals' illegal acts: Why not boot the bad guys?

16 hours, 25 minutes ago

Those who failed to push the Bush-Kennedy illegal-immigration bill through the Senate last month promise a new tack: They will try to get what they want but in smaller pieces.

If they want to get anything but a cold shoulder from the American majority, they had better start by enforcing existing laws and paying simple attention to the serious criminals who should have been deported long ago.

A Bloomberg News Service report last Friday noted the deplorable lack of cooperation and communication among the nation's federal, state and local prisons in the area of determining the number and identity of illegal aliens within their walls.

Local and state authorities, the story said, had given up even bothering to identify these bad guys because the federal government had told them it doesn't have the money to deport them.

Ezequiel Lopez is a good example of what needs to be fixed in this system. Lopez is an illegal immigrant from Mexico who shot and killed a Wisconsin lawman in May. He was free at the time, even though he had been jailed before for two violent crimes. The law says he should have been deported, but the Bloomberg story says, "federal immigration authorities didn't know he had been in custody, and state and local police didn't tell them.''

According to Bloomberg, fewer than half the foreigners convicted of crimes in this country are deported after serving their sentences.

The Homeland Security folks claim it is a lack of money. Considering the billions of dollars spent on and by this department, that is hard to imagine. But even if that is the case, the American public has never been stingy when it comes to prosecuting criminals.

Legislation that passed the House last month would, Bloomberg reports, "require the immigration agency to check monthly with the nation's prisons and jails to get an up-to-date number of incarcerated illegal immigrants. Another provision in the legislation would expand a program to deputize local and state police to help identify potential deportees among people they arrest.''

It's about time. The U.S. Senate, New Hampshire's Judd Gregg and John Sununu included, should take this little piece of immigration reform and get it passed.

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