[dirtboy]

He said he was willing to turn over undocumented criminals to federal immigration authorities, but would not turn over illegal aliens who had not committed a crime.

Quite the parsing routine there, Rudy. This guy reminds me more and more of Bill Clinton with each passing day.

[jonathanmo]

He's not parsing. He's making a direct statement about his reasoning. In his view at the time as Mayor, he considered illegal immigrants that had broken no local crimes as a Federal issue. He considered illegal immigrants that committed a local crime as a problem for the city, and turned them over to the Feds.

This is a common thread among many larger cities. Rudy did not invent this concept. At a national level, George Bush has the same policy.