If they aren’t “serious criminals” you let them walk. Period.
So all you have to do to be an illegal alien permanently in this country is not be a “serious” criminal in this country.
More or less. More on that after a this…
The Department of Homeland Security is systematically reviewing thousands of pending immigration cases and moving to dismiss those filed against suspected illegal immigrants who have no serious criminal records, according to several sources familiar with the efforts.
Culling the immigration court system dockets of noncriminals started in earnest in Houston about a month ago and has stunned local immigration attorneys, who have reported coming to court anticipating clients’ deportations only to learn that the government was dismissing their cases.
Richard Rocha, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman, said Tuesday that the review is part of the agency’s broader, nationwide strategy to prioritize the deportations of illegal immigrants who pose a threat to national security and public safety. Rocha declined to provide further details.
Critics assailed the plan as another sign that the Obama administration is trying to create a kind of backdoor “amnesty” program.
Raed Gonzalez, an immigration attorney who was briefed on the effort by Homeland Security’s deputy chief counsel in Houston, said DHS confirmed that it’s reviewing cases nationwide, though not yet to the pace of the local office. He said the others are expected to follow suit soon.
Gonzalez, the liaison between the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which administers the immigration court system, and the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said DHS now has five attorneys assigned full time to reviewing all active cases in Houston’s immigration court.
Gonzalez said DHS attorneys are conducting the reviews on a case-by-case basis. However, he said they are following general guidelines that allow for the dismissal of cases for defendants who have been in the country for two or more years and have no felony convictions.
In some instances, defendants can have one misdemeanor conviction, but it cannot involve a DWI, family violence or sexual crime, Gonzalez said.
Massive backlog of cases
Opponents of illegal immigration were critical of the dismissals.
“They’ve made clear that they have no interest in enforcing immigration laws against people who are not convicted criminals,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for strict controls.
“This situation is just another side effect of President Obama’s failure to deliver on his campaign promise to make immigration reform a priority in his first year,” said U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. “Until he does, state and local authorities are left with no choice but to pick up the slack for prosecuting and detaining criminal aliens.”
Gonzalez called the dismissals a necessary step in unclogging a massive backlog in the immigration court system. In June, there were more than 248,000 cases pending in immigration courts across the country, including about 23,000 in Texas, according to data compiled by researchers at Syracuse University.
‘Absolutely fantastic’
Gonzalez said he went into immigration court downtown on Monday and was given a court date in October 2011 for one client. But, he said, the government’s attorney requested the dismissal of that case and those of two more of his clients, and the cases were dispatched by the judge.
The court “was terminating all of the cases that came up,” Gonzalez said. “It was absolutely fantastic.”
“We’re all calling each other saying, ‘Can you believe this?’ ” said John Nechman, another Houston immigration attorney, who had two cases dismissed.
Attorney Elizabeth Mendoza Macias, who has practiced in Houston for 17 years, said she had cases for several clients dismissed during the past month and eventually called DHS to find out what was going on. She said she was told by a DHS trial attorney that 2,500 cases were under review in Houston.
“I had five (dismissed) in one week, and two more that I just received,” Mendoza said. “And I am expecting many more, many more, in the next month.”
Her clients, all previously charged with being in the country illegally, included:
An El Salvadoran man married to a U.S. citizen who has two U.S.-born children. The client had a pending asylum case in the court system, but the case was not particularly strong. Now that his case is terminated, he will be eligible to obtain permanent residency through his wife, Mendoza said.
A woman from Cameroon, who was in removal proceedings after being caught by the U.S. Border Patrol, had her case terminated by the government. She meets the criteria of a trafficking victim, Mendoza said, and can now apply for a visa.
Memo outlines priorities
Immigrants who have had their cases terminated are frequently left in limbo, immigration attorneys said, and are not granted any form of legal status.
“It’s very, very key to understand that these aliens are not being granted anything in court. They are still here illegally. They don’t have work permits. They don’t have Social Security numbers,” Mendoza said. “ICE is just saying, ‘At this particular moment, we are not going to proceed with trying to remove you from the United States.’ ”
In a June 30 memo, ICE Assistant Secretary John Morton outlined the agency’s priorities, saying it had the capacity to remove about 400,000 illegal immigrants annually — about 4 percent of the estimated illegal immigrant population in the country. The memo outlines priorities for the detention and removal system, putting criminals and threats to national security at the top of the list.
Up to 17,000 cases
On Tuesday, ICE officials provided a copy of a new policy memo from Morton dated Aug. 20 that instructs government attorneys to review the court cases of people with pending applications to adjust status based on their relation to a U.S. citizen. Morton estimates in the memo that the effort could affect up to 17,000 cases.
Tre Rebsock, the ICE union representative in Houston, said even if the efforts involve only a fraction of the pending immigration cases, “that’s going to make our officers feel even more powerless to enforce the laws.” (Houston Chronicle)
Mind you bullets from the recent gun battles in Mexico have been flying across the border and hitting building, including the University of Tex El Paso, but don’t worry about that DHS has it all under control. 
Now to that “less” I spoke of…
An illegal immigrant arrested five times for driving offenses, including a 2005 hit-and-run that ultimately left an elderly Dacula man dead, was voluntarily deported last October, the Gwinnett County Sheriff’s office said Monday. Whether he will be involuntarily deported following his latest charge remains uncertain.
“He either didn’t leave the country as agreed or he left and came back,” said sheriff’s spokeswoman Stacey Bourbonnais. Added Sheriff Butch Conway, “they put him on the honor system, more or less.”
Celso Campo-Duartes’ current whereabouts are no mystery. He’s been in Gwinnett’s custody since May 28, when he was charged with disorderly conduct and unlicensed driving.
In January 2008, the suspect entered a negotiated plea to a charge of failure to stop at or return to the scene of an accident in the death of Aubrey Sosebee, an 83-year-old World War II veteran who was run over by the plumber as he was retrieving his mail. Campo-Duartes was sentenced to two years in prison and three years of probation and was released for time served.
A little more than a year ago, he was arrested for driving without a license and released the same day on $760 bond. In October, he was arrested on the same charge. (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
So is he “serious” enough” or are the drug runners, smugglers, and coyotes coming across the border with impunity “serious” enough for DHS??
Like I have said before, now we know why the judge put SB1070′s enforcement provision on hold because they would “overwhelm” the system.
The problem is so big they don’t, cant, and won’t deal with it. But they will lie about it and call anyone who disagrees with them a racist!
The Obama administration said it would focus its enforcement of illegal immigration laws by targeting workplace activities, but a recent report shows that while audits of employers are slightly up over the Bush administration, worker arrests are down drastically since the end of 2008.
Under Obama, employer audits are up 50 percent, fines have tripled to almost $3 million and the number of executives arrested is slightly up over the Bush administration.
But under President Obama, the numbers of arrests and deportations of illegals taken into custody at work sites plummeted by more than 80 percent from the last year of the Bush administration. In the current fiscal year 2010, which ends Sept. 30, ICE has arrested 900 workers.
That compares to immigration agents under Bush raiding hundreds of businesses from factory to farm — and arresting and deporting more than 6,000 illegal immigrants in raids in 2008 — more than 5,000 simply for being in the country illegally.
“No administration in the history of this nation removed more illegal immigrants from the country than we did last year and I expect the records to continue. We’re serious about enforcement. We’re going to go out and we’re just going to do it,” he said.
Can you guess if this was Obama, Napalitano or ICE? they’ve all said the same talking point.
But if they aren’t “serious” criminals they can now walk. And even if they are “serious” they can always self-deport so they can walk across the border again tomorrow. No problem.
So we raid your business, we fine you, you’re workers are taken by ICE. Then if they aren’t “serious” criminals they let them go so you can rehire them again or you can hire the group let go by another employer yesterday.
Let’s just swap workers and call that jobs “saved or created”. Yeah, that’s the ticket!
That is unless you’re a chronic drunk in Atlanta who kills people at their mailbox that is.
Maybe…So just like the Blank Panther case and others, the government has made the decision on what selective enforcement they wish to pursue. The law is mailable to their political whims of the moment.
“It is tough when you have law enforcement turning a blind eye to entire categories of aliens — and that is what is happening here — it is a de facto amnesty,” Julie Myers, an ICE director under Bush said.
“No one is talking about giving a free pass for fraud, or ID theft is to be taken lightly, but we know the vast majority of the workforce did not commit any crime,” Marshall Fitz, director of immigration policy at the Center for American Progress (a liberal think tank) said.
After all, being her illegally is not a crime to Liberals. It is to Federal law, but not to Liberals. So it’s no big deal.
And you’re a racist if you disagree, just remember that.
The law is there to enforced when they feel like it and how they feel like it.
SAN DIEGO — The speedboat is about three miles offshore when a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent cuts the engine to drift on the current in quiet darkness, hoping for the telltale signs of immigrant smuggling — sulfur fumes or a motor’s whirr.
“It’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack, and the haystack is the Pacific Ocean,” agent Tim Feige says minutes before sunrise marks the end to another uneventful shift.
This is a new frontier for illegal immigrants entering the United States — a roughly 400-square-mile ocean expanse that stretches from a bullring on the shores of Tijuana, Mexico, to suburban Los Angeles. In growing numbers, migrants are gambling their lives at sea as land crossings become even more arduous and likely to end in arrest.
Sea interdictions and arrests have spiked year-over-year for three years, as enforcement efforts ramp up to meet the challenge.
And that doesn’t even count the sea piracy on the lake in Zapata in Texas.
1 if by land 2 if by Sea. The Illegals are Coming! The Illegals are coming!
But don’t worry, if you’re not a “serious” criminal Big Sis and her pals don’t actually care. And even if you are, it depends on their mood ring at that moment. And you can always self-deport yourself so you can come back tomorrow.
No big deal. But it looks like we give a damn.
And if criticize us you’re a racist!
So why are they so against securing the border against the drug dealer, coyotes and bullets? Hmmm…
So lesson #1 for Terrorists coming across the border, keep your nose clean and no one will be paying any attention to you, or at the very least just don’t be “serious”, until you set off your bomb!
If unrestricted illegal immigration is unsatisfactory and “sealing the border” is unsatisfactory, where is the path ahead?
How to look like we’re are doing something, but in fact we aren’t doing diddly.
SNAFU
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