President Barack Obama's former Secretary of Homeland Security debunked the notion pushed by pro-amnesty advocates that Obama is the "deporter in chief" because his administration has been "overzealous" in deporting illegal immigrants.
In an interview with Conan Nolan of NBC Los Angeles on Sunday, Janet Napolitano, who is now the president of the University of California system, was asked whether criticism of her from the left that she was "overzealous in the deportation of undocumented immigrants" was unfair.
by Tony Lee 5 May 2014, 12:04 PM PDT
breitbart
"I think it was, actually," Napolitano said. "It didn't look at the whole picture. A lot of those deportations were individuals who were captured right at the border so they had not yet entered the United States."
Napolitano then said, "because of the way we handled them differently than prior administrations, they got counted differently."
She also said the Obama administration, for the first time, "instituted priorities in terms of deportations" which "had never been done before."
Napolitano said that criticism of "overzealous deportations" overlooks the fact that the Obama administration, through executive fiat, enacted the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that allowed illegal immigrant DREAMers who came to the country before they were 16 years of age, are under 30, and meet other requirements to receive temporary amnesty and work permits.
What Napolitano said is consistent with revelations from Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), as Breitbart News reported, that "fully 98 percent of individuals deported from the United States in 2013 were either criminals, apprehended while illegally crossing the border, or had been previously deported."
That has not been good enough for pro-amnesty advocates who want more leniency.
They have criticized President Barack Obama as the "deporter in chief" to pressure him to "unilaterally stop deportations and grant more amnesty, even though that notion has been thoroughly debunked by the mainstream press reports from the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times."
Obama, succumbing to the pressure, tasked his Homeland Security Secretary, Jeh Johnson, to conduct an administrative review of the nation's deportation laws. He has met with advocacy groups "to reportedly consider administrative actions--such as granting more forms of amnesty, not deporting illegal immigrants who have not committed 'major' crimes, and allowing bond hearings for illegal immigrants--to further erode the nation's laws."
In response to those meetings, 22 senators wrote Obama a letter denouncing him for threatening the "entire constitutional system" by "nullifying" the nation's immigration laws.
"Your actions demonstrate an astonishing disregard for the Constitution, the rule of law, and the rights of American citizens and legal residents," the senators wrote. "Our entire constitutional system is threatened when the Executive Branch suspends the law at its whim and our nation’s sovereignty is imperiled when the commander-in-chief refuses to defend the integrity of its borders."
But, as Vice President Joe Biden may have inadvertently revealed this weekend, the Obama administration may be hellbent on ending even more deportations. A protester interrupted Biden's speech and yelled, "Stop deportations!"
"We'll do that, too, kid, but let me finish my speech," Biden said in response.
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