Thread: Feds to review all deportation cases to cull serious crimes

Aug 18, 2011

Feds to review all deportation cases to cull serious crimes

By Alan Gomez, USA TODAY Updated 34m ago

The Obama administration announced today that it would review more than 300,000 pending deportations to focus on high-priority cases, such as illegal immigrants who have committed serious crimes.

The administration deported 393,000 people in 2010, with about half of them considered criminals, according to an Associated Press review.

Immigrant-rights groups hailed the decision as a major breakthrough that will protect illegal immigrants who were brought to the United States as children. Opponents said the new policy ignores immigration law and will allow people in the country illegally to stay so long as they do not commit serious crimes.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano laid out the new process in a letter to members of Congress, saying DHS and the Department of Justice had created a working group to evaluate all pending deportation cases –- estimated to be over 300,000 –- and would also screen all new cases. Under the guidelines, auditors would consider a person's age when they arrived in the country, their criminal record, their education and whether they served in the military when determining whether to move forward with their deportation case.

"From a law enforcement and public safety perspective, DHS enforcement resources must continue to be focused on our highest priorities," Napolitano wrote. "Doing otherwise hinders our public safety mission – clogging immigration court dockets and diverting DHS enforcement resources away from individuals who pose a threat to public safety."

Some legislators, led by Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, have unsuccessfully tried to get Congress to pass the DREAM Act, which would have granted legal status to some children of illegal immigrants who had completed high school in the U.S. and planned on attending college or joining the military. Those efforts have repeatedly failed, but they view Thursday's decision as the next-best option.

"We need to be doing all we can to keep these talented, dedicated, American students here, not wasting increasingly precious resources sending them away to countries they barely remember," Durbin said in a statement. "The administration's new process is a fair and just way to deal with an important group of immigrant students and I will closely monitor DHS to ensure it is fully implemented."

Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which advocates for lower levels of immigration, said Obama's move completely disregards public sentiment and a Congress that has refused to pass several versions of the DREAM Act.

"This step by the White House amounts to a complete abrogation of the President's duty to enforce the laws of the land and a huge breach of the public trust," Stein said in a statement. "In essence, the administration has declared that U.S. immigration is now virtually unlimited to anyone willing to try to enter and only those who commit violent felonies after arrival are subject to enforcement. This is not the nation's immigration law."

http://content.usatoday.com/communities ... s-crimes/1

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