Illegal Immigrants Charged With Violent Crimes Released During Sequester
Among the illegal immigrants released into the country during last year’s federal government sequester included those charged with crimes of violence.
At the time, the Obama administration insisted that those individuals facing deportation proceedings who were let go from immigration jails during the sequester’s automatic budget cuts were only low-level, non-violent offenders. That apparently is not the case
USA TODAY is reporting that “New records contradict the Obama administration’s assurances to Congress and the public that the 2,200 people it freed from immigration jails last year to save money had only minor criminal records. The records, obtained by USA TODAY, show immigration officials released some undocumented immigrants who had faced far more serious criminal charges, including people charged with kidnapping, sexual assault, drug trafficking and homicide.”
Responding to the report about those undocumented persons charged with felonies, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) representative claimed that aliens set free “with more significant criminal histories were, by and large, dictated by special circumstances outside of the agency’s control.”
As The Inquisitr previously reported, a Department of Homeland Security Inspector General previously concluded that ICE released 600 convicted criminal illegal aliens in advance of the 2013 sequester cuts.
At the time, then-DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano claimed that career ICE officials decided on the mass release to save money without checking with her and that the situation was not handled well.
In a House Judiciary Committee hearing in February 2013 with then-ICE Director John Morton, U.S. Rep. Trey Gowdy declared that “It does look like the decision to release the detainees was a political determination and not a monetary determination. It appears to me that the release of the detainees was part of a sequester campaign that included the fictional firing of teachers, the closing of the White House for student tours, the displacement of meat inspectors and now we are going to release aggravated felons—some aggravated felons onto the street.”
At that hearing, Morton maintained that none of those alien detainees sprung from jail were accused of committing violent crimes.
Separately, an analysis from the Center for Immigration Studies suggested that about 167,000 illegal immigrants with criminal records are allegedly on the loose in the United States after being released by authorities. The report also indicates that possibly as many as 80,000 illegal aliens “with criminal histories who were able to escape deportation proceedings in 2014, even after being encountered by an ICE officer.”
Setting aside those illegal immigrants with criminal backgrounds, overall deportations in general have reportedly dropped by between 20 to 34 percent over last year depending upon which statistics are consulted.
In the meantime, the Obama administration is apparently seeking contractors who can print up to 34 million permanent resident documents, i.e. green cards, in advance of the president’s vow to implement some form of illegal immigrant amnesty by executive order after the November election.
[image via Bing]
