ON THE CUTTING EDGE: ICE Goes After Fugitive Aliens (Finally)
Compounding the horror of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Federal government discovered that the whereabouts of 314,000 immigrants who had been ordered deported were unknown, including 5,046 from countries where al-Qaeda was ensconced.
How could this happen? Without enough detention space to hold illegal aliens caught by border control agents until their court dates, non-Mexicans were routinely released on their own recognizance. Not surprisingly, almost all were no-shows so judges ordered their deportation in absentia. Since 9/11, a lack of manpower to find "fugitive aliens" or "alien absconders" doubled their numbers to 636,000. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) finally ended "catch-and-release" in September and launched a new initiative to find and arrest illegal immigrants who have ignored and evaded deportation orders.
Safety and security issues aside, The Washington Post notes that the huge number of alien absconders currently in the U.S. has also skewed the immigration reform debate:
The failure to remove "low-hanging fruit" such as fugitives "may reflect the fact that there's a complete neglect for enforcement, or that even in egregious cases, they just can't get their act together," said Steven A. Camarota, spokesman for the Center on Immigration Studies, a group that advocates less immigration.
Immigrant advocates and some former federal authorities counter that the growing backlog of fugitives - who make up 5 percent of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants - demonstrates the futility of relying on enforcement alone to stop illegal immigration.
This drastic change in procedure – to enforce deportation orders – should eventually straighten out this twisted logic as federal agents steadily chip away at the fugitive alien backlog.
In its article, the WaPo details the activities of one "raiding party of flak-jacketed immigration agents" who hit the streets of Fairfax County (VA) at 2:10 a.m. looking for specific targets that include "a middle-age Pakistani man … wanted in connection with a slaying and bank robbery in his home country" and "a Salvadoran man convicted of attempted grand larceny" and one "Osmarbyn Hernandez, 32, a Salvadoran who lost his legal status after several DUI convictions."
After the agents caught up to Hernandez, he "tried to enlist the sympathy of one of the ICE agents":
"I've got a 9-year-old son here. I've got my wife here. Isn't there anything I can do to solve this?" he pleaded.
The agent sighed.
"In this country, there are laws. If you'd followed the laws, you wouldn't be in this situation," he replied.
By the end of their shift, the agents had caught five alien absconders. Inappropriate Nazi comparisons notwithstanding, maybe Lou Dobbs isn’t nuts to suggest that if the U.S. government really wanted to, all 12 million illegal aliens from Mexico currently within our borders could be found and deported.
Enforcing the law. What a cutting edge concept.
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