Thread: White House: ICE to blame for release of illegals

White House: ICE to blame for release of illegals

By Stephen Dinan
The Washington Times
Wednesday, February 27, 2013

The White House said Wednesday it had nothing to do with the decision by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to release immigrants awaiting deportation back into the country in order to save money ahead of the looming budget “sequesters.”

“This was a decision made by career officials at ICE without any input from the White House as a result of fiscal uncertainty over the continuing resolution as well as possible sequestration,” spokesman Jay Carney told reporters.

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He didn’t say whether the White House agreed with the decision, but seemed to defend it, saying that all of the immigrants released remain subject to deportation and are still being supervised either electronically or by being required to check in regularly.

Mr. Carney said it costs less money to release the immigrants and monitor them than it does to hold them in detention centers, and he said that will help ICE stay within a new lower budget that will result from the automatic across-the-board spending cuts slated to begin Friday morning.

The White House didn’t say why the administration began releasing immigrants before the budget cuts.

On Tuesday ICE, which is an agency within the Homeland Security Department, confirmed it had conducted a review of the immigrants it was holding in its detention centers, and decided there were several hundred who were low-priority risks and could be released.

In 2012 ICE detained about 34,000 immigrants on an average day, though House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul said that number had dropped to 30,773 immigrants as of last week.

He said that was “a clear violation” of existing law.

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SPECIAL COVERAGE: Immigration Reform

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The decision to release immigrants has drawn a stern response from both sides of the immigration debate.

Immigrant-rights advocates said the fact that there were low-priority immigrants being detained shows that Mr. Obama’s policies are too harsh, while congressional Republicans said releasing the immigrants could put dangerous criminals out on the streets.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Robert W. Goodlatte hinted Wednesday morning that the number of immigrants released could be in the thousands.

“If the president’s idea of how to manage our federal government is to release 6,000-10,000 people who have been detained, and most of the people who have been detained are not just illegally present in the united states but they’ve committed some kind of a criminal act in addition to that, that seems to me to be a pretty misguided approach to how you save money in that agency,” Mr. Goodlatte, Virginia Republican, told reporters at a breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor.

And Mr. McCaul sent a letter to ICE asking for specific information on every person who’s been released, including what sort of monitoring they are subject to and what caused them to be detained in the first place.

White House: ICE to blame for release of illegals - Washington Times
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White House: Release of illegal immigrants not our call

http://www.usatoday.com/.../illegal-...eased.../19515...

by Alan Gomez

1 hour ago – President Obama's spokesman said Wednesday that the White House played no part in the decision to release hundreds of illegal immigrants ...

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The WH sure doesn't know much of what is going on. Didn't know about releasing thousands of illegals from detention centers, didn't know about Fast and Furious or Benghazi. Either there is a lot of covering up or incompetency or both.

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Originally Posted by Jean

The WH sure doesn't know much of what is going on. Didn't know about releasing thousands of illegals from detention centers, didn't know about Fast and Furious or Benghazi. Either there is a lot of covering up or incompetency or both.

INCOMPETENCY, when one hand doesn't know what the other hand is doing.

Passing the buck. The only thing obama is good at.