Using the backdrop of possible budget cuts due to the President’s sequestration, the federal government has decided to go proactive and simply start releasing illegal immigrants currently being held in detention centers. Not just a few here and there, but “waves” of illegal immigrants across the country.
Via McClatchy (h/t Weasel Zippers):
The federal government released groups of illegal immigrants from custody across the country Monday at the same time the White House was making its case that impending budget cuts would harm efforts to protect the border and enforce federal immigration laws.
Advocates reported “waves” of illegal immigrants being released from at least three detention centers in Texas, Florida and Louisiana.
U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement confirmed the release of some illegal immigrants Monday night but would not say how many or from which detention centers.
“In order to make the best use of our limited detention resources in the current fiscal climate and to manage our detention population under current congressionally mandated levels, ICE has directed field offices to review the detained population to ensure it is in line with available funding,” said ICE spokeswoman Gillian Christensen. “As a result of this review, a number of detained aliens have been released around the country and placed on an appropriate, more cost-effective form of supervised release.”
Christensen said ICE is continuing to prosecute their cases in immigration court and will seek their removal from the country.
“We’re getting reports from multiple detention centers in Texas, Florida and New Orleans where detainees who are low priority are being released in mass without bond,” Domenic Powell, a spokesman for the National Immigrant Youth Alliance, an immigration advocacy group, said Monday night.
A gentle reminder that sequestration was in fact, President Obama’s idea from the start…
A Washington Post fact-checker flatly called the idea of sequestration “a White House gambit”, buoyed by a Bob Woodward book called The Price of Politics, in which members of the Obama administration proposed the idea to Senator Harry Reid. The following excerpt (p. 339) explains the idea as presented by White House staff:
“Lew, Nabors, Sperling and Bruce Reed, Biden’s chief of staff, had finally decided to propose using language from the 1985 Gramm-Rudman-Hollings deficit reduction law as the model for the trigger. It seemed tough enough to apply to the current situation. It would require a sequester with half the cuts from defense, and the other half from domestic programs.”
What’s more, an Office of Management and Budget report explains just how devastating the Obama sequestration will be in domestic areas (emphasis mine):
“On the nondefense side, sequestration would undermine investments vital to economic growth, threaten the safety and security of the American people, and cause severe harm to programs that benefit the middle-class, seniors, and children. … The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s ability to respond to incidents of terrorism and other catastrophic events would be undermined.”
Let that sink in – The safety and security of the American people would be undermined by a political gambit straight from the White House.
Was this (releasing illegal immigrants) part of the plan all along? Amnesty has long been a goal of the President, with members of his National Latino Advisory Council openly admitting that such a tactic would put “12 million people on the path to citizenship and eventually voters.”
One member called it “creating a governing coalition for the long term.”
The Democrats are well on their way.