Earlier this year a report from the Center for Immigration Studies showed the Obama administration released 68,000 criminal illegal aliens onto the streets of the United States. Many of those released have criminal records of armed robbery, assault, rape and homicide.
-In 2013, ICE targeted 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.
Bolstering the CIS report and revealing new information, a recently released Inspector General report from the Department of Homeland Security shows hundreds more criminal aliens with brutal crime records were also released.
More than 600 illegal immigrant detainees released by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement(ICE) in February 2013 have previous criminal convictions, according to a new report from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Inspector General. ICE released over 2,000 illegal immigrant detainees in February 2013.The report containing the findings of the investigation, conducted at the request of Senators Tom Coburn (R-OK) and John McCain (R-AZ), was released today.
"It is baffling how an agency charged with homeland security and immigration enforcement would knowingly release hundreds of illegals with criminal histories.In this single action, ICE undermined its own credibility, the rule of law, and the safety of Americans and local law enforcement," Dr. Coburn stated. "This report provides more evidence that our nation's immigration laws are being flagrantly disregarded. Americans need to be assured the problems within ICE that led to the dangerous release of illegal aliens will be fixed and DHS and ICE will never again violate the law by releasing known criminals into our streets."
Many Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents have been warning about criminal aliens for years and have expressed frustration with those in Washington D.C. who do not take the danger seriously.
"We aren't even scratching the surface on the criminal illegal alien problem in the United States," ICE Council President and ICE Agent Chris Crane said on a call with reporters last year. "That part [cartels] is absent from this discussion as are many parts of this....we know that the drug cartels, that the lieutenants and the troops, the soldiers, they're all within the interior of United States and they're all conducting business as are many other criminal elements and criminal individuals. There are people coming here for this to be a land of opportunity and there are people coming here because the United States for them is a target of opportunity and we believe there is a very disproportionate number of criminals coming into the United States. That conversation is almost completely absent from this entire public conversation about what's happening....It's just another part of this debate that gives us this concern that this is all about politics and not about really fixing the problems that we face within our broken immigration system and providing for what is best for everyone is best for America to include and most importantly, public safety."
It was just over a week ago when Border Patrol Agent Javier Vega was murdered while fishing off-duty with his family in Texas by two illegal aliens with known criminal records.