Senator Jeff Sessions, Alabama Republican, introduced two top border immigration agents on Thursday to talk about the lax enforcement directives they are given by the Department of Homeland Security and how illegal immigrants are cheating the system to get into United States even after multiple violent crimes have been committed.
“The Administration claims it has diligently enforced immigration law and that the border is ‘more secure than ever.’ But those on the front lines know this to be untrue. They see the violence, chaos and lawlessness. They have lost confidence in the leadership of their agencies… As you will hear today, this administration has engaged in a sustained, relentless effort to undermine America’s immigration laws,” said Sessions.
Back in mid June, President Obama issued an executive order that halted the deportation of illegal immigrants that came to he United States as young children. The directive also gives these individuals, numbering about eight hundred thousand, the ability to work legally in the country as well.
According to The New York Times:
Under the change, the Department of Homeland Security will no longer initiate the deportation of illegal immigrants who came to the United States before age 16u, have lived here for at least five years, and are in school, are high school graduates or are military veterans in good standing. The immigrants must also be not more than 30 and have clean criminal records.
However, border patrol agents are saying that this criteria is being thrown out the window and illegal immigrants who should have been charged with a crime and sitting in prison are released into the general public after being arrested.
“Prosecutorial discretion on dreamers is solely based on the individuals’ claims. Our orders are: If an alien says they went to high school, then let them go. If they say they have a GED, then let them go,” said ICE agent Chris Crane, President of the National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council. “Officers have been told that there is no burden for the alien to prove anything-even with the greatly relaxed policies, an alien is not required to prove that they meet any of the criteria.”
Crane then went further retelling a story of an illegal immigrant who committed four crimes and was arrested but later released:
“As another example, the incident in El Paso released publicly last week, ICE manager were provided with the following details. One, an alien was arrested by local police and placed in jail on two charges. Charge one-assault with bodily injury to a family member and charge two-interfering with that person’s attempts to call emergency assistance.”
“When ICE arrested the individual for immigration violations, he attempted to escape, another criminal offense, one agent was injured in the incident claiming the injuries were intentionally inflicted by the escapee, another criminal offense, of course assault of a federal agent, so in this case we have four possible criminal charges-two involving violence, one injured family member and one injured officer. Without any questioning—without any investigation, the alien was released as a dreamer. No criminal charges, no immigration charges, no nothing.”
“‘He’s a dreamer. Release him.’ Incidents like this happening around the nation lead us to believe that the new policies will be ineffective in terms of providing for public safety.”
According to a press release sent out by the National ICE Council:
While the criminal alien was released without charge, agents were questioned before medical treatment was even administered and may face disciplinary charges from ICE regarding the escape. One agent is medically restricted from duty for at least two weeks due to injuries sustained during the incident.
ICE released this statement to Fox News on the matter:
“Because the agency encounters more removable aliens than it is able to process, the agency prioritizes its resources on aliens whose removal have the greatest impact on public safety and the integrity of the immigration system,” spokeswoman Gillian Christensen said in a statement. “ICE’s efforts to target the agency’s enforcement priorities are paying big dividends. For each of the past three fiscal years, ICE has removed more criminal aliens from the country than ever before and more than 90 percent of ICE’s removals fell into one of the agency’s enforcement priority categories.”
Border Patrol agent George McCubbin, III, President of the National Border Patrol Council, the union representing America’s more than 17,000 border agents and personnel, was critical of DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano.