Thread: REPORT: OBAMA ADMIN RELEASED TENS OF THOUSANDS OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT CRIMINALS

REPORT: OBAMA ADMIN RELEASED TENS OF THOUSANDS OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT CRIMINALS

by MATTHEW BOYLE
30 Mar 2014

President Obama’s Department of Homeland Security caught then released 68,000 aliens who had previously been convicted of a crime, a new report from the Center for Immigration Studies shows.

The report, provided to Breitbart News ahead of its late Sunday evening release, reviews internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) metrics to conclude that the Obama administration released 35 percent—or 68,000—convicted criminal aliens back into the U.S. general population when they could have been deported. “The criminal alien releases typically occur without formal notice to local law enforcement agencies and victims,” CIS’s Jessica Vaughan, the report’s author, added.

By “criminal,” ICE means people who have been convicted of a misdemeanor or felony that is not a traffic violation. For instance, traffic violations like Driving Under the Influence of Alcohol or even vehicular manslaughter do not count toward this description of “criminal alien.” As for the definition of “alien,” ICE mostly means illegal aliens, though some are legal aliens when they are considered deportable legal aliens—which is possible for legal immigrants who have committed a serious crime, like a felony.

The documents also show ICE only deported a small fraction of the aliens they encountered overall.

“In 2013, ICE targeted only 195,000, or 25 percent, out of 722,000 potentially deportable aliens they encountered,” CIS’s Vaughan wrote. “Most of these aliens came to ICE’s attention after incarceration for a local arrest.”

This report comes out on the heels of a report from the office of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) last week which found that only .08 percent of the aliens deported in 2013 were not serial immigration law violators or convicted of serious crimes.
In response to these findings from CIS that follow up on his office’s report last week, Sessions said immigration law in America has essentially ceased to exist.

“The preponderance of the evidence demonstrates that immigration enforcement in America has collapsed,” Sessions said. “Even those with criminal convictions are being released. DHS is a department in crisis. Secretary [Jeh] Johnson must reject the President’s demands to weaken enforcement further and tell him that his duty, and his officers’ duty, is to enforce the law – not break it. As Homeland Secretary, Mr. Johnson is tasked with ensuring the public safety and the rule of law. But Secretary Johnson is not meeting these duties.”

The CIS report also contains a breakdown per city of percentages of criminal aliens who were released back into the population. San Antonio’s 79 percent is the highest, where ICE encountered 36,228 criminal aliens and released 28,680 back into the general population in 2013. New York City’s 71 percent is next, where ICE agents encountered 7,571 criminal aliens and released 5,391 of them. Washington, D.C. follows that, with ICE agents encountering 8,688 criminal aliens and releasing 64 percent, or 5,558, of them into the public.

Other cities with high percentages include Salt Lake City, Houston, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Newark, and Buffalo.

Notably, many of these cities are not in border states, which means visa overstays and illegal aliens who crossed the border but migrated further inward are as much a problem as the actual U.S.-Mexico border in terms of stopping the flow and enforcing the law.

“These findings raise further alarm over the Obama administration’s pending review of deportation practices, which reportedly may further expand the administration’s abuse of ‘prosecutorial discretion,’” CIS’s Vaughan wrote. “Interior enforcement activity has already declined 40 percent since the imposition of “prosecutorial discretion” policies in 2011. Rather than accelerating this decline, there is an urgent need to review and reverse the public safety and fiscal harm cause by the president’s policies.”

Sessions echoed Vaughan’s concerns, saying the lack of enforcement for immigration laws further hurts the ability of American citizens to obtain employment.

“American citizens have a legal and moral right to the protections our immigration laws afford – at the border, the interior and the workplace,” Sessions said. “The administration has stripped these protections and adopted a government policy that encourages new arrivals to enter illegally or overstay visas by advertising immunity from future enforcement. Comments from top Administration officials, such as Attorney General Holder’s claim that amnesty is a civil right, or Vice President Biden’s claim that those here illegally are all US citizens (apparently including someone whose visa expired yesterday), demonstrate the administration’s increasing belief in an open borders policy the American public has always rejected."

2013 wrd

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/03/30/REPORT-Obama-Admin-Released-Tens-Of-Thousands-Of-Illegal-Immigrant-Criminals

We need to know how many Americans have been killed or injured by these illegal immigrant terrorists and their traitor sponsor Obama by this terrible action alone!

W

added to the homepage
http://www.alipac.us/content/report-...riminals-2784/

The Right Scoop
Posted on Mar 31, 2014
By Joe Guest

If the GOP cares for their own survival as a party and America as a country, they need to push for enforcement, enforcement, enforcement at the border, BEFORE any other talk about immigration reform!

Almost 70,000 illegal immigrants with CRIMINAL CONVICTIONS released back into the US last year

Senator Rubio, please read this from The Hill:

An internal Department of Homeland Security document compiling statistics on arrests and deportations in 2013 showed that ICE agents encountered 193,357 illegal immigrants with criminal convictions but issued charging documents for only 125,478. More than 67,800 were released.

The data came from an end-of-year “Weekly Departures and Detention Report.” The Center for Immigration Studies, a research group that favors stricter enforcement of immigration laws, estimates ICE agents released more than a third of illegal immigrants with criminal records they detained. “ICE released 68,000 criminal aliens in 2013, or 35 percent of the criminal aliens encountered by officers.

The vast majority of these releases occurred because of the Obama administration’s prosecutorial discretion policies,” Jessica Vaughn, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, wrote in a memo summarizing the DHS document. ICE classifies illegal immigrants as criminal if they have been convicted of a crime, not including traffic offense, Vaughn noted…

The Center for Immigration Studies reports that ICE officials moved to deport 28 percent fewer illegal immigrants from the interior of the country in 2013 than in 2012 [interior means those arrested deep inside the United States; instead of at the Border].

So basically, President Obama is letting as many illegals stay in the US so that they will get citizenship once the GOP caves on this issue. If the GOP cares for their own survival as a party and America as a country, they need to push for enforcement, enforcement, enforcement at the border, BEFORE any other talk about immigration reform!

http://therightscoop.com/almost-7000...-us-last-year/

The Hill
By Alexander Bolton
03/31/14

“The preponderance of the evidence demonstrates that immigration enforcement in America has collapsed.

Even those with criminal convictions are being released. DHS is a department in crisis."

DHS document: 68,000 illegal immigrants with criminal convictions released in 2013

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials last year released 68,000 illegal immigrants with criminal convictions, undercutting Democratic claims that President Obama has strictly enforced immigration laws.
An internal Department of Homeland Security document compiling statistics on arrests and deportations in 2013 showed that ICE agents encountered 193,357 illegal immigrants with criminal convictions but issued charging documents for only 125,478. More than 67,800 were released.

The data came from an end-of-year “Weekly Departures and Detention Report.”

The Center for Immigration Studies, a research group that favors stricter enforcement of immigration laws, estimates ICE agents released more than a third of illegal immigrants with criminal records they detained.

“ICE released 68,000 criminal aliens in 2013, or 35 percent of the criminal aliens encountered by officers. The vast majority of these releases occurred because of the Obama administration’s prosecutorial discretion policies,” Jessica Vaughn, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, wrote in a memo summarizing the DHS document.ICE classifies illegal immigrants as criminal if they have been convicted of a crime, not including traffic offense, Vaughn noted.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (Ala.), the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee, blasted the administration’s record.

“The preponderance of the evidence demonstrates that immigration enforcement in America has collapsed. Even those with criminal convictions are being released. DHS is a department in crisis,” he said in a statement Sunday.

“Secretary Johnson must reject the president’s demands to weaken enforcement further and tell him that his duty, and his officers’ duty, is to enforce the law – not break it,” he added in reference to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson.

A spokeswoman for ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Advocacy groups on both sides of the immigration debate have fired salvos back and forth over Obama’s track record enforcing the law.

Republicans say they cannot trust Obama to enforce the law and Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) cited that as an obstacle to passing immigration reform through the House.

Pro-immigrant groups argue Obama has enforced the law too zealously.

Janet Murguía, the president of the National Council of La Raza, called Obama the “deporter-in-chief” earlier this month.

Senate Democrats such as Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) have called on Obama to halt the deportations of illegal immigrants who are immediate family members of U.S. citizens.

The Center for Immigration Studies reports that ICE officials moved to deport 28 percent fewer illegal immigrants from the interior of the country in 2013 than in 2012.

The group obtained the law enforcement records through a lawsuit.

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/2...#ixzz2xXuiLaSu

The report from CIS.
Catch and Release

Interior immigration enforcement in 2013

By Jessica Vaughan March 2014
Download a PDF of this Backgrounder

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Jessica M. Vaughan is the Director of Policy Studies at the Center for Immigration Studies. She would like to thank Zack Nunez for research assistance.

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Summary
A review of internal ICE metrics for 2013 reveals that hundreds of thousands of deportable aliens who were identified in the interior of the country were released instead of removed under the administration's sweeping "prosecutorial discretion" guidelines. In 2013, ICE reported 722,000 encounters with potentially deportable aliens, most of whom came to their attention after incarceration for a local arrest. Yet ICE officials followed through with immigration charges for only 195,000 of these aliens, only about one-fourth. According to ICE personnel, the vast majority of these releases occurred because of current policies that shield most illegal aliens from enforcement, not because the aliens turned out to have legal status or were qualified to stay in the United States.Many of the aliens ignored by ICE were convicted criminals. In 2013, ICE agents released 68,000 aliens with criminal convictions, or 35 percent of all criminal aliens they reported encountering. The criminal alien releases typically occur without formal notice to local law enforcement agencies and victims.These findings raise further alarm over the Obama administration's pending review of deportation practices, which reportedly may further expand the administration's abuse of "prosecutorial discretion". Interior enforcement activity has already declined 40 percent since the imposition of "prosecutorial discretion" policies in 2011.¹ Rather than accelerating this decline, there is an urgent need to review and reverse the public safety and fiscal harm cause by the president's policies.

Key Findings

• In 2013, ICE charged only 195,000, or 25 percent, out of 722,000 potentially deportable aliens they encountered. Most of these aliens came to ICE's attention after incarceration for a local arrest.
• ICE released 68,000 criminal aliens in 2013, or 35 percent of the criminal aliens encountered by officers. The vast majority of these releases occurred because of the Obama administration's prosecutorial discretion policies, not because the aliens were not deportable.
• ICE targeted 28 percent fewer aliens for deportation from the interior in 2013 than in 2012, despite sustained high numbers of encounters in the Criminal Alien and Secure Communities programs.
• Every ICE field office but one reported a decline in interior enforcement activity, with the largest decline in the Atlanta field office, which covers Georgia and the Carolinas.
• ICE reports that there are more than 870,000 aliens on its docket who have been ordered removed, but who remain in defiance of the law.
• Under current policies, an alien's family relationships, political considerations, attention from advocacy groups, and other factors not related to public safety can trump even serious criminal convictions and result in the termination of a deportation case.
• Less than 2 percent of ICE's caseload was in detention at the end of fiscal year 2013.
• About three-fourths of the aliens ICE detained in 2013 had criminal and/or immigration convictions so serious that the detention was required by statute. This suggests the need for more detention capacity, so ICE can avoid releasing so many deportable criminal aliens.

Unless otherwise noted, the data for this report are from the 2013 fiscal year-end edition of ICE's "Weekly Departures and Detention Report" (WRD), which is prepared by the Information Resource Management Unit of ICE's Office of Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO).²

This report compiles a variety of ICE caseload statistics, including encounters, arrests, detention, and removal of aliens. The tables in this report use data taken directly from the WRD.

ICE Agents Catch and Release Aliens on a Massive Scale
Table 1 summarizes key metrics on ICE's caseload. Notably, only a fraction of the cases on ICE's docket are actually deported in any given year. The departures figure, about 387,000, includes all forms of deportation, including formal removal and voluntary return,³ and counts all cases that land in ICE custody for some reason, regardless of which agency made the arrest. In 2013, about two-thirds of the departures reported by ICE were the result of a Border Patrol arrest.⁴

The Obama administration and anti-enforcement activist groups have tried to portray the number of departures as "record-breaking" and indicative of robust immigration enforcement. They have tried to support this claim by showing that the number of departures credited to ICE is higher than ever before. However, an independent analysis of ICE records obtained in a lawsuit showed that ICE was able to achieve these "record" departures only because the agency was taking credit for removing a large number of individuals who were apprehended by the Border Patrol. Such cases made up the majority of ICE's reported deportations in 2013, but they had never been counted that way in previous administrations.⁵


Although former DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano denied that the ICE reports on her watch were misleading, her successor, Jeh Johnson, recently admitted to a House committee that the administration's deportation figures are not comparable to previous administrations because of the large number of border removal cases.⁶

In the context of other key metrics reported in this document, the number of departures recorded by ICE is unimpressive and concerning. A more accurate picture of the state of interior enforcement can be found in the set of four metrics that relates directly to interior enforcement and the work of ICE agents and officers in the Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) division of ICE: encounters, arrests, detainers and charging documents Issued. These are found in the shaded part of Table 1.

In 2013, ICE officers reported about 722,000 encounters with aliens, meaning the alien was questioned, fingerprinted, or otherwise screened about immigration status, most often in a jail setting, or possibly as part of an enforcement operation, but always as the result of an actionable lead. In most cases these leads come from local jails or vetted identifications through ERO's Criminal Alien and Secure Communities programs. In the last several years, these programs have produced record numbers of encounters for ICE agents and officers, even as the number of aliens charged has declined.

Yet out of these 722,000 encounters with illegal and criminal aliens reported in 2013, ICE agents filed charges against only 195,000, or 27 percent, of the aliens. While some of the remaining 73 percent of aliens encountered might be the subject of detainers for future charges, and a small number may have turned out not to be amenable to deportation, most of the other illegal aliens were simply ignored. According to ICE personnel, the vast gap between the number of encounters reported and the number of aliens put on the path to removal exists because officers are not permitted to file charges against aliens who do not fall into the administration's narrowly defined criteria for enforcement, regardless of the criminal charges or the circumstances in which the alien was identified. Under current policies, an alien generally must have serious criminal convictions, prior deportations, or immigration violations before an officer can move to deport them. These constraints have led to a 40 percent decline in interior ICE arrests since the first "prosecutorial discretion" policies were implemented in June 2011.

Note that even as ICE moved to deport roughly 200,000 aliens from the interior in 2013, ICE booked more than 400,000 aliens into custody (detention). The difference between the two figures reflects the number of Border Patrol and other agency cases that are referred to ICE custody for processing. These cases show up in ICE's metrics as a departure and in Border Patrol or CBP metrics as an apprehension.

Finally, Table 1 shows the shocking number of cases on ICE's docket — 872,000 as of the end of the 2013 fiscal year — who had received final orders of removal, but who had not yet departed. Cases are counted in this category after all due process has been exhausted. There are therefore hundreds of thousands of alien fugitives in the United States right now who have been ordered removed and ignored those orders. While a few thousand of these are aliens who cannot be removed because they refuse to cooperate in obtaining travel documents or their home countries will not accept them, the vast majority are illegal aliens who have absconded from immigration hearings, an offense similar to contempt of court. The administration has indicated it is considering an executive action to forbid ICE from taking action against these individuals, rationalizing that these are mere immigration offenses.⁷

Table 2 provides details on encounters and charging documents issued broken down by ICE Field Offices. The Buffalo and Los Angeles field offices logged the greatest number of encounters, but the San Diego, New Orleans, and Houston field offices show the largest percentage of charging documents issued out of all encounters. The field offices with the worst ratio of encounters to aliens charged were Buffalo, Chicago, Miami, and Los Angeles.



Despite High Encounters, 28 Percent Fewer Aliens Targeted in 2013

A comparison of the number of charging documents issued in 2012 and 2013, shown in Table 3, reveals that despite the high number of encounters, significantly fewer illegal and criminal aliens were targeted by ICE last year. Overall, 28 percent fewer aliens were charged in 2013 compared to the previous year. These numbers do not include cases initiated by the 287(g) partnership program, in which some local officers have the authority to initiate deportations.

Every ICE field office except Buffalo experienced a decline in the number of aliens targeted for deportation. The largest decline in enforcement was in the Atlanta field office, which covers Georgia and the Carolinas. The Salt Lake City, DC/Virginia, and Houston field offices also saw larger than average declines.

ICE Released One-Third of Criminal Aliens Located

One way ICE tracks its caseload is according to criminality. Aliens are classified as "criminal" if they have been convicted of a crime, not including traffic offenses. Any alien lacking a conviction, even if there are criminal charges that have not yet been resolved, is classified as "non-criminal". Table 4 provides a breakdown by ICE field office of criminal alien encounters and charging documents issued




In 2013, ICE agents reported encountering 193,000 criminal aliens — yet they targeted only 125,000 of these criminal aliens for deportation, letting off 68,000, or 35 percent of the total. The ICE field offices with the largest ratios of criminal releases were San Antonio, New York City, DC/Virginia, and Newark (N.J.).

These figures suggest that despite claims of a focus on public safety, the administration's prosecutorial discretion criteria are allowing factors such as family relationships, political considerations, or attention from advocacy groups to trump criminal convictions as a factor leading to deportation.

For example, the prosecutorial discretion directives issued by ICE headquarters instruct officers to release illegal aliens if the alien is a parent or caregiver, if the alien claims to be in school, if the alien has been here a long time, or if the alien claims to be eligible for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, among other factors.⁸

If an alien is found to have applied for legal status, protocol requires the deportation charges be put on hold, and the benefits application may be expedited, presumably to spare the alien the consequences a criminal conviction might have on the alien's eligibility for the legal status.⁹ In addition, ICE agents and officers have been instructed to ignore convictions for state crimes if the conviction occurred under a state law that the administration opposes or thinks is too harsh. Finally, many criminal aliens have been released from ICE custody, received case continuances, and sometimes even case dismissals as a result of petitions, protests, and vigils staged by illegal alien advocacy groups

One locality that has been specifically targeted by ICE for politically motivated prosecutorial discretion is Maricopa County, Ariz. ICE attorneys in the Arizona field office reportedly are required to terminate deportation cases in which illegal aliens have been convicted of felony identity theft, which is a "crime involving moral turpitude" that requires mandatory detention and should cause the alien to be removed.

Reportedly, some of these illegal aliens also have managed to qualify for DACA, despite convictions for crimes that defrauded the state and federal governments and caused severe problems for the victim of the theft. Some of the illegal aliens benefitting from ICE's failure to enforce the law are also active in local advocacy groups demanding a halt to deportations.

The release of so many convicted criminals back into U.S. communities, when they could be removed to their home countries, is a large-scale abuse of authority that inevitably leads to public harm. There is no possible excuse or logical argument, and certainly no legal justification, for failing to deport tens of thousands of aliens with criminal convictions who have been encountered by an ICE officer.

has claimed it lacks the resources to deport more aliens than it has for the last several years, but it has yet to explain why it has used these resources primarily to detain and process individuals apprehended by the Border Patrol, whom the Border Patrol could remove, instead of deporting criminal aliens discovered by ICE officers in the interior.

Instead, the administration has repeatedly asked Congress to give it less money for detention. This year the president's budget requests a reduction of $255 million in funding for detention space for ICE, even though they are not now maintaining custody of every alien whose detention is required by law, nor every alien who poses a risk to the public or is a flight risk.

We know from experience and from empirical evidence that releasing illegal aliens who have already been involved in crime leads to more crime and more victims. This phenomenon was quantified in 2012 in a report commissioned by the House Judiciary committee. This analysis found that 26,000 illegal aliens who were released instead of removed went on to commit another 58,000 crimes soon after release. These additional crimes included 59 murders, 21 attempted murders, more than 4,000 major felonies and other 1,000 other violent crimes.¹⁰

Only a Tiny Share of ICE Cases Are in Detention

Table 5 shows the number of aliens who were in ICE detention as of the date of the report. Just over 32,000 people were being held by ICE at that time. Table 6 shows that this population is a tiny fraction (1.8 percent) of the total ICE caseload of more than 1.8 million cases, which helps explain why there is such a large number of post-final order cases who have not departed. It is not a priority for ICE to locate them, and with interior enforcement in abeyance, there is little incentive for them to leave on their own

More than three-fourths of these individuals are in detention because their immigration and/or criminal violations are so serious that their detention by ICE is mandatory under statute, without possibility of bond. These offenses include: serious felonies, crimes of moral turpitude, drug offenses, firearms offenses, prostitution and certain domestic violence crimes.
Conclusion

The recent campaign by advocacy groups to portray the president as a tough immigration enforcer at the helm of a system that is producing "record" deportations bears no resemblance to the reality of immigration enforcement today. Interior immigration has declined significantly and ICE is ignoring hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens, including tens of thousands with criminal convictions, who are encountered by ICE officers and agents.

Top DHS officials have indicated that they are looking for ways to further relax interior enforcement. Specifically, the administration is considering a new policy to forbid ICE officers from removing illegal aliens who have been previously deported, who are fugitives, or who have skipped immigration hearings. One faux justification for excusing these lawbreakers will be that the agency needs to better focus its limited resources on convicted criminals. The argument is misleading on many levels, including the fact that a large share of these repeat immigration violators were originally removed because of criminal convictions. Lawmakers should request that ICE produce the records detailing the criminal history of repeat immigration violators in order to shed light on this issue. Regardless of criminality, common sense dictates that those who repeatedly and habitually violate our immigration laws inherently pose a risk to public safety and to the integrity of our immigration system: What force does an order of removal have if the administration deems that those ordered removed are free to remain in the United States if they so choose?

It makes a mockery of our legal system.Rather than scaling back interior enforcement, the appropriate response for ICE to address the enormous size of its caseload, including the large number of criminal aliens who should be removed, is to become more efficient, not less productive. ICE should expand use of the accelerated forms of removal, such as expedited removal, stipulated removal, and judicial orders of removal.¹¹ Rather than relying primarily on enforcement, ICE and other DHS agencies should seek to improve compliance with visa program rules and laws against illegal hiring to reduce incentives for illegal settlement. ICE should promote partnerships, such as 287(g), that allow local governments to assist in enforcement using local resources — this is a fiscal no-brainer for ICE. The federal government should challenge sanctuary jurisdictions that obstruct immigration enforcement and make ICE's job harder. For all its complaints about limited resources, the administration has actually expended considerable resources in the other direction: targeting states that try to support federal law enforcement, while increasing the amount of red tape for its own officers.

Expanding the Obama administration's deliberate suppression of immigration law enforcement creates not only an extraordinary public safety risk, but undermines the very integrity of the immigration laws designed to protect U.S. workers, taxpayers, and legal immigrants.

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End Notes¹ Jessica M. Vaughan, "Lawsuit Documents Criminal Alien Releases, Decline in Enforcement, Cooked Statistics", Center for Immigration Studies blog, April, 2013; and Jessica M Vaughan, "Deportation Numbers Unwrapped: Raw Statistics Reveal the Real Stlory of ICE Enforcement in Decline", Center for Immigration Studies Backgrounder, October, 2013.² "Weekly Departures and Detention Report", ICE, October 6, 2013.³ A removal is the compulsory and confirmed movement of an alien out of the United States based on a formal order of removal, with a penalty for illegal re-entry. Returns include other forms of deportation that do not carry a penalty for illegal re-entry.⁴ Vaughan, "Deportation Numbers Unwrapped: Raw Statistics Reveal the Real Stlory of ICE Enforcement in Decline"; ICE, "FY 2013 ICE Immigration Removals", December 2013.⁵ Vaughan, op. cit.⁶ Dan Cadman, "A Truth Finally Admitted", Center for Immigration Studies blog, March, 2014.⁷ See John Sandweg, former acting ICE Director, "Who Should Be Deported?" Los Angeles Times, March 27, 2014.⁸ The original prosecutorial discretion memo: John Morton, "Exercising Prosecutorial Discretion Consistent with the Civil Immigration Enforcement Priorities of the Agency for the Apprehension, Detention, and Removal of Aliens", ICE, June 17, 2011. Examples of prosecutorial discretion are recounted in these articles: Jessica M. Vaughan,"Lawsuit Documents Criminal Alien Releases, Decline in Enforcement, Cooked Statistics", CIS blog, April 9, 2013; Jessica M. Vaughan, "ICE Exercises Prosecutorial Discretion for ID Fraud", CIS blog, December 20, 2012; Jessica M. Vaughan, "ICE Agents Protest Disciplinary Action for Enforcing Laws", CIS blog, August 22, 2012; and Michael Volpe, "Congressman blasts ICE for releasing alleged child rapist", The Daily Caller, March 24, 2012.⁹ This protocol results in illegal or removable aliens with criminal convictions receiving priority for adjudication before the millions of qualified benefits applicants, similar to the way illegal alien applicants for DACA were prioritized before those applying as the spouse of U.S. citizens.¹⁰ Congressional Research Service, "Analysis of Data Regarding Certain Individuals Identified Through Secure Communities", July 27, 2012.¹¹ For a more detailed explanation of these tools, see "Deportation Basics", Center for Immigration StudiesBackgrounder, July 2011.
http://cis.org/catch-and-release

Daily Caller
Caroline May
3/31/14

ICE released 68,000 criminal aliens in 2013, or 35 percent of the criminal aliens encountered by officers. The vast majority of these releases occurred because of the Obama administration’s prosecutorial discretion policies, not because the aliens were not deportable.

Report: Obama administration released 68,000 convicted criminal aliens last year

The Obama administration is threatening public safety by deliberately hampering immigration law and releasing aliens with criminal records, according to a new review of internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement data.

A Center for Immigration Studies report to be released Monday and obtained in advance by The Daily Caller, found that last year ICE reported nearly 722,000 encounters with illegal or criminal immigrants. But ICE officers filed immigration charges against less than 195,000 aliens.

Other key findings in the review include:

• In 2013, ICE charged only 195,000, or 25 percent, out of 722,000 potentially deportable aliens they encountered. Most of these aliens came to ICE’s attention after incarceration for a local arrest.
• ICE released 68,000 criminal aliens in 2013, or 35 percent of the criminal aliens encountered by officers. The vast majority of these releases occurred because of the Obama administration’s prosecutorial discretion policies, not because the aliens were not deportable.
• ICE targeted 28 percent fewer aliens for deportation from the interior in 2013 than in 2012, despite sustained high numbers of encounters in the Criminal Alien and Secure Communities programs.
• Every ICE field office but one reported a decline in interior enforcement activity.
• ICE reports that there are more than 870,000 aliens on its docket who have been ordered removed, but who remain in defiance of the law.
• Under current policies, an alien’s family relationships, political considerations, attention from advocacy groups, and other factors not related to public safety can trump even serious criminal convictions and result in the termination of a deportation case.
• Less than 2 percent of ICE’s caseload was in detention at the end of fiscal year 2013. About three-fourths of the aliens ICE detained in 2013 had criminal and/or immigration convictions so serious that the detention was required by statute.

“According to ICE personnel, the vast gap between the number of encounters reported and the number of aliens put on the path to removal exists because officers are not permitted to file charges against aliens who do not fall into the administration’s narrowly defined criteria for enforcement, regardless of the criminal charges or the circumstances in which the alien was identified,” the report, authored by CIS director of policy studies Jessica Vaughan, reads.

Since June 2011, when the first of the Obama administration’s “prosecutorial discretion” policies were put in place, the report adds, interior ICE arrests have declined by 40 percent.

“The Obama administration and anti-enforcement activist groups have tried to portray the number of departures as ‘record-breaking’ and indicative of robust immigration enforcement. They have tried to support this claim by showing that the number of departures credited to ICE is higher than ever before,” the report reads. “However, an independent analysis of ICE records obtained in a lawsuit showed that ICE was able to achieve these ‘record’ departures only because the agency was taking credit for removing a large number of individuals who were apprehended by the Border Patrol. Such cases made up the majority of ICE’s reported deportations in 2013, but they had never been counted that way in previous administrations.”

Indeed, as the review highlights, many aliens with criminal convictions have simply been released.

In 2013 some 68,000 criminal aliens were released — or 35 percent of all criminal aliens ICE reported encountering, according to the report. ICE field offices with the highest rates of criminal releases were San Antonio (79 percent), New York City (71 percent), Washington, D.C. area (64 percent), and Newark, N.J. (60 percent).

“These figures suggest that despite claims of a focus on public safety, the administration’s prosecutorial discretion criteria are allowing factors such as family relationships, political considerations, or attention from advocacy groups to trump criminal convictions as a factor leading to deportation,” the report reads.

The data is sure to further frustrate critics of the Obama administration’s immigration policies that much more, including Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions who says the “[Department of Homeland Security] is a department in crisis” and is calling on DHS Sec. Jeh Johnson to “reject the President’s demands to weaken enforcement further and tell him that his duty, and his officers’ duty, is to enforce the law – not break it.”

“As Homeland Secretary, Mr. Johnson is tasked with ensuring the public safety and the rule of law. But Secretary Johnson is not meeting these duties,” Sessions said in a statement to TheDC. “American citizens have a legal and moral right to the protections our immigration laws afford — at the border, the interior and the workplace. The administration has stripped these protections and adopted a government policy that encourages new arrivals to enter illegally or overstay visas by advertising immunity from future enforcement.”

“Comments from top Administration officials, such as Attorney General Holder’s claim that amnesty is a civil right, or Vice President Biden’s claim that those here illegally are all U.S. citizens (apparently including someone whose visa expired yesterday), demonstrate the administration’s increasing belief in an open borders policy the American public has always rejected,” he added.

According to Vaughan, Congress should initiate an official look into the impact of the administration’s prosecutorial discretion policies.

“The Obama administration’s deliberate obstruction of immigration enforcement, in which tens of thousands of criminal aliens are released instead of removed, is threatening the well-being of American communities,” she said.

To Sessions, however, it is Republicans who must work to hold the administration accountable for its rejection of the law.

“The Administration’s lawless policies have not only impaired public safety but increased economic suffering for millions of vulnerable Americans by depriving them of their jobs and wages,” he said. “Unfortunately, Congressional Democrats continue to empower this lawlessness. Republicans must work to end it.”

http://dailycaller.com/2014/03/31/re...ens-last-year/

FoxNews.com
​
Enforcement ‘Crisis’? Documents show 68,000 ‘criminal aliens’ released last year

By Judson Berger
Published March 31, 2014 FoxNews.com




Immigration and Customs Enforcement released 68,000 foreign nationals who had criminal convictions last year instead of pursuing deportation, according to newly uncovered documents -- a statistic one senator said represents an enforcement "crisis."

The internal documents were obtained and published by the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based group that advocates stricter immigration enforcement. According to the documents and the group's analysis, ICE agents reported encountering 193,000 "criminal aliens" in 2013, but only targeted 125,000 for deportation.

A total of 67,879 were released.

CIS called it a "large-scale abuse of authority."

"The Obama administration's deliberate obstruction of immigration enforcement, in which tens of thousands of criminal aliens are released instead of removed, is threatening the well-being of American communities," study author Jessica Vaughan said in a statement. "It's not a matter of if, but how many families will suffer harm as a result."

The statistics challenge repeated claims by the administration that, when weighing whether to pursue deportation, they are prioritizing cases where the illegal immigrant in question has been convicted of a crime.

Indeed, the documents show that those with a criminal record are far more likely to be targeted for deportation than those without one. But they also show the agency is letting thousands who have a criminal record off the hook.

The CIS report said factors such as "family relationships, political considerations, or attention from advocacy groups" are likely helping to "trump criminal convictions as a factor leading to deportation."

The report further deepens concerns about the course of an ongoing internal review of the administration's enforcement and deportation policies. Groups like CIS have warned that this could chip away at an enforcement structure that already has been weakened.

"The preponderance of the evidence demonstrates that immigration enforcement in America has collapsed," Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, said. "Even those with criminal convictions are being released. [The Department of Homeland Security] is a department in crisis."

Earlier this month, a DHS spokesman said the internal review of immigration enforcement is a process that is "ongoing" and will be done "expeditiously."

"Since taking office, the secretary has made clear that he shares the president's commitment of enforcing our immigration laws effectively and sensibly, in line with our values," the spokesman said. "As part of that effort he has been taking a hard look at these tough issues, meeting with a range of stakeholders and employees and already has been assessing if there are areas where we can further align our enforcement policies with our goal of sound law enforcement practice that prioritizes public safety."

The ICE documents did not break down the types of criminal activity that those allowed to stay in the country had been convicted of. But the CIS report noted a 2012 report by House Republicans that tracked 26,000 illegal and criminal immigrants who were re-arrested and found they were tied to 58,000 crimes and violations -- much of them drunken-driving arrests, but also major criminal offenses like murder and rape.

CIS also reported that in 2013, ICE charged just 195,000 of the 722,000 "potentially deportable aliens" they encountered.

Further, the agency reported more than 870,000 illegal immigrants have been ordered removed but have remained in the country anyway.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014...sed-last-year/

Laura Ingraham

Who says Obama is soft on illegal immigration?
VIDEO: Find out how the Obama Administration ended up releasing tens of thousands of illegal aliens who had been convicted of crimes.
Is this negligence acceptable? Should there be consequences for this type of ineptitude?
Video at the Page Link:



Report: Obama Admin Released Tens Of Thousands Of Illegal Immigrant Criminals

Report: Obama Admin Released Tens Of Thousands Of Illegal Immigrant Criminals

VIDEO.LAURAINGRAHAM.COM

6:51 PM 03/31/2014
Brendan Bordelon
The Daily Caller

Steve Henry, the Chief Deputy Sheriff of Pinal County, Arizona, called the Obama administration’s deportation record “a travesty,” after a new report revealed that the Department of Homeland Security released 68,000 illegal aliens convicted of crimes in 2013.

Henry spoke with Fox News’ Neil Cavuto about the report on Monday, becoming Arizona’s second high-ranking law enforcement officer to challenge the White House’s immigration narrative on national television. Last week Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the top law-enforcement officer for neighboring Maricopa County, accused the Obama administration of using “smoke and mirrors” to obscure the true number of immigrants actually deported.

“Well essentially what happened is, the federal government once again hasn’t done their job,” Henry began. “And it’s truly what you said. It’s a travesty. Each and every day law enforcement — especially here in Arizona — goes out and fights this battle that the federal government is supposed to be fighting.”

“And we put ourselves at risk for the good of the country,” he continued. “And if 68,000 out of 722,000 could’ve been deported in 2013, it’s just amazing.”

Henry said he wasn’t surprised, noting that whistleblowers with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol said as much early last year. “We reached out to the Secretary [of Homeland Security] back then, and you know, it was crickets,” he claimed.

The deputy sheriff said that many of the illegal criminals his county turns over to ICE are released through a “revolving door.”

“We call it ‘in through the out door,’” he said, explaining that even many violent criminals are released into the United States ‘temporarily’ until a court date can be set for their sentencing and deportation.

“The federal government believes that if you give someone who doesn’t have standing in the country, doesn’t have any anchor in this country, that if they sign a piece of paper with a promise to appear at a future court date — and maybe or maybe not you put an electronic bracelet on their ankle — that they’re going to come back,” he scoffed. “I beg to differ. Come on, really? We know it doesn’t work.”

http://dailycaller.com/2014/03/31/ar...rd-a-travesty/