I heard the interview and he expressed zero interest in this. In fact he said it would overwhelm police and we wouldn't have enough jail space
Correction. Rudy was making a MIS-statement of fact regarding the law. Illegal entry into the United States is already a federal crime, a misdemeanor punishable by 6 months in prison for the first offense. The second offense is a felony punishable by 2 years in prison. 8 U.S.C. 1325.
For Rudy, a former United States Attorney and Associate Attorney General, not to know this is really stunning particularly since he is constantly brandishing such credentials, even in the dig he took at Fred in the debate the other night. (”Fred does a good job play in my role on TV”)
It reminded me of what he said during one of his interviews to the effect that there was a constitutional right to abortion and that he believed the government had to fund that right for indigent women. Another breathtakingly ignorant statement of the law, implying that a constitutional right should be funded by the government. This is not strict constructionism and it is not, by the way, fiscal conservatism, nor is it in any way socially conservative. This statement, which I am sure will come up again, manages to offend nearly every part of the Republican coalition, social conservatives, fiscal conservatives and judicial conservatives.
What statement were you referring to exactly?
Rudy's assertion that illegal immigration isn't a crime is most certainly not true.
GLENN: Should it be (a crime)?
GIULIANI: Should it be? No, it shouldn't be because the government wouldn't be able to prosecute it. We couldn't prosecute 12 million people. We have only 2 million people in jail right now for all the crimes that are committed in the country, 2.5 million. If you were to make it a crime, you would have to take the resources of the criminal justice system and increase it by about 6. In other words, you'd have to take all the 800,000 police, and who knows how many police we would have to have.