U.S. lawmaker: Migrant cases detract from serious crimes
U.S. lawmaker: Migrant cases detract from serious crimes
by Jerry Kammer - Sept. 24, 2008 12:00 AM
Republic Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - While the Bush administration has stepped up immigration enforcement along the U.S. borders, it has short-changed and politicized the courts that handle immigration cases, the chairwoman of a House panel said Tuesday.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., who heads the subcommittee that oversees immigration policy, also said the administration's decision to criminally prosecute some illegal immigrants for crossing the border is diverting resources from the prosecution of other offenses.
Prosecutions for illegal entry are an attempt to discourage illegal immigration by raising the stakes for people crossing from Mexico, confronting them with the possibility of imprisonment rather than simply sending them back across the border.
"We've had feedback privately from U.S. attorneys that they've been pulled off organized crime and drug smuggling and the like to do massive expansions of these prosecutions of busboys and gardeners," Lofgren said during a sometimes-contentious oversight hearing of the Justice Department's administration of immigration courts.
As part of the program, officials want to prosecute up to 100 cases a day in the busiest human-smuggling area on the border.
Mexican authorities have said that illegal immigrants have been deterred from crossing by the prospect of spending two weeks to six months in prison for the misdemeanor crime.
Historically, illegal immigrants have immediately been shipped back to Mexico if they did not have criminal records. But if they are caught re-entering illegally again, they are charged with felonies, which can carry sentences up to five years.
Democrats and Republicans on the panel agreed that the administration and Congress need to provide money to hire more immigration judges. They said the 215 judges nationwide are being overwhelmed by a workload that exceeds 300,000 cases annually.
Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, said hiring more judges "is just as important as hiring additional Border Patrol agents."
But Smith added that the stepped-up enforcement of immigration laws would ultimately reduce the immigration courts' workload.
"There will be less of an incentive to come here in the first place ... (and) a decrease in the number of matters that come before the immigration courts," Smith said.
During the hearing, Lofgren, who practiced immigration law before entering Congress, and Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, traded charges that the hiring of immigration judges has become politically motivated.
A July report by the Justice Department's inspector general and Office of Professional Responsibility cited evidence that several former Justice Department officials during George W. Bush's administration violated federal law "by considering political or ideological affiliations in soliciting and evaluating candidates" for immigration judgeships.
Immigration judges are supposed to be career officials, not political appointees.
King countered by citing claims that during the Clinton administration, the selection of immigration judges had systematically discriminated against White males.
Those claims led to a class-action lawsuit that ended with a multimillion-dollar, out-of-court settlement.
Reach the reporter at jkammer@gns.gannett.com.
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