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T. Michael Andrews, Commentary

March 20, 2009 - 7:02PM


I'm confused. The secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, former Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, has ordered a "review" of the Feb. 24 raid on a factory in Bellingham, Wash., by Immigration Customs and Enforcement.

Even though the agency had solid evidence that some of the workers were gang members, the secretary has promised "to get to the bottom" of why the raid was conducted when asked by a congressional oversight committee recently.

From my perspective it was a picture-perfect operation. All 28 arrested had used fictitious documents to obtain their jobs, and some were even gang members.

Is 9/11 now a faded memory? Does Napolitano need to be reminded that three of the 19 highjackers violated these same immigration statues, and that all of the highjackers submitted false documentation to federal authorities when arriving in the U.S.? Didn't the 9/11 Commission report also indicate the terrorists purposely used the poorly enforced U.S. immigration laws to come to the U.S. as students?

It should be recalled that one of the reasons Homeland Security combined the departments responsible for customs and port inspection with the Border Patrol was because it wanted immigration and customs enforcement to be seamless and efficient. It may be one reason why we haven't been attacked since 9/11.

Obviously, I don't want to suggest that every illegal alien in the U.S. is a terrorist. What I am saying is that ICE has a job to do. Agents don't have the luxury of guessing who should stay and who gets deported based on last year's political rhetoric.

While Napolitano tries to "get to the bottom" of this raid, please be reminded that raids like it resulted in the removal of more than a quarter-million immigrants living here illegally. And as she knows from her time as governor and U.S. attorney before that, according to The Washington Times quoting a recent Department of Justice audit report, "Criminal aliens set free on the streets of America, instead of being deported after serving their time, are rearrested (up to) six more times by U.S. authorities."

As Napolitano reaches her conclusions, please be mindful of the message she will be sending and, most important, to whom she'll be sending it."

T. Michael Andrews of Tucson was a senior policy adviser to
Tom Ridge, the first secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security

http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/story/136922