Replies

http://washingtonindependent.com/70548/hearing-lays-out-immigration-battle-ahead

Hearing Lays Out Immigration Battle Ahead

[snips]Thursday’s hearing, ostensibly about how ICE should improve its immigrant detention system, underscored the fundamentally inconsistent positions of lawmakers who either view illegal immigrants as dangerous criminals that need to be locked up and ultimately deported, or as hapless men and women who only broke the law in the hopes of attaining the American dream: a better life for themselves and their families.

“I think the most effective immigration reform is to truly enforce the laws on the books,” said Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.), who stands squarely in the former camp. “Detention is an important part of enforcement,” he said, a view repeated by most Republican lawmakers and witnesses. “It is not safe or efficient to release thousands of foreign nationals who are in this country illegally,” he continued. “Aliens in detention facilities are not here on vacation . . . They should not be kept in facilities that are better than we give to U.S. citizens who are arrested and awaiting trial.”

Democrats, meanwhile, were concerned that the U.S. is detaining too many immigrants in unnecessarily restrictive conditions, and hampering their ability to claim a right to remain in the United States. Recent reports from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse and Human Rights Watch have concluded exactly that, as did a recent report commissioned by ICE itself.

Committee vice-chair Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.), presiding over the hearing, said she was “more concerned about the cost of incarcerating people and what type of people we’re incarcerating,” and “if these people have a claim under current law to be in this country that they get through the process in a timely manner in order to put that forward,” she said. “That’s why I called this hearing — not to purchase Hilton hotels,” she quipped, responding to Souder. “They’re not good investments these days anyway.” The Detention and Removal Operations division of ICE had a budget of about $2.6 billion in fiscal year 2009, according to a recent ICE report.

But many Republicans and immigration restrictionists scoff at such proposals. Mark Krikorian, executive director of the immigration restrictionist group Center for Immigration Studies, testified that alternatives to detention are merely “a synonym for ‘catch and release.’ ”

“A majority of criminal aliens who promise to appear for their court dates are simply lying to the immigration authorities,” he said. “We’d be better advised to increase ICE’s bedspace,” although ICE has not requested a budget increase for incarceration, he said.

Krirkorian warned that the problem will only become worse as ICE continues to step up enforcement. ICE has been expanding efforts to encourage local law enforcement to arrest more illegal immigrants. The Secure Communities program requires that local law enforcement fingerprint everyone housed in local jails and send that biometric information to ICE, which can compare it against their databases. The 287(g) program, meanwhile, authorizes local law enforcement to arrest anyone suspected of violating the federal immigration laws. Krikorian on Thursday noted that such programs will lead to a huge increase in the number of illegal immigrants arrested, yet ICE has not sufficiently planned for what to do with them.

Jail space will diminish dramatically, he predicted, and fewer illegal aliens not arrested for criminal behavior will be held. “So the absconder population will resume rapid growth,” he said. Eventually, “criminal aliens will end up having to be released for lack of space” and “those people are going to commit further crimes.” Congress will see “political blowback” from that, he predicted. “And that outrage is going to be deserved.”