Nice reporting by the Washington Times of a perfectly horrible act by the Obama Administration last year. You heard about Obama's hissy fit in releasing throngs of illegal aliens, many of them known to be serious crime threats, all to demonstrate the horrors of budget sequestration. Well the overall numbers of Homeland Security's actions last year are now in, and they're not pretty.
Worse, when they released thousands of clearly dangerous criminals, they knew exactly what they were doing and they had every opportunity not to. They could have held them until their cases were heard, at which point they could have been deported. But that's not how this administration rolls. If you've never heard the term Threat Level 1, welcome to the ranks of the enlightened:
Most of the illegal immigrant criminals Homeland Security officials released from custody last year were discretionary, meaning the department could have kept them in detention but chose instead to let them onto the streets as their deportation cases moved through the system, according to new numbers from Congress.
Some of those released were the worst of the worst — more than 3,700 “Threat Level 1” criminals, who are deemed the top priority for deportation, were still released out into the community even as they waited for their immigration cases to be heard.
Homeland Security officials have implied their hands are tied by court rulings in many cases, but the numbers, obtained by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, showed 57 percent of the criminals released were by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s own choice, and they could have been kept instead.
"Put aside the spin, and the fact is that over 17,000 of the criminal aliens released last year were released due to ICE discretion, representing 57 percent of the releases,” said Mr. Goodlatte. “The Obama administration’s lax enforcement policies are reckless and needlessly endanger our communities.”
How do you work out a clear objective - whether as a policy matter or as a political one - for an irresponsible move like this? I understand that liberals reflexively dislike tough-on-crime policies, but just sending 3,700 criminals out onto the street when you know what they're capable of would seem to be a bridge too far even for most serious lefties. I guess you could see it as a go-big-or-go-home move to appeal to the Hispanic/Latino community in an election year - for all the good it did them. And of course, we know they were trying to freak everyone out about the tiniest of budget tightening measures.
I think it's a bit like they're approach to Iran and Cuba. Liberals in general, and definitely Obama in particular, think it's a huge and pointless hassle for government to spend its time and resources playing cop to the bad guys of the world or of society. Who's to say who's bad anyway, right? Rogue nation with nukes threatens allies? Rebuke the allies and make a deal. Rogue criminals would threaten the innocent unless you keep them locked up or deport them? What's the worst that can happen? This is not the part of governing that interests liberals in the slightest. They think it's a waste of time and money and probably racist too.
So just release the detainees and tell everyone to be careful, and when you get called on it, blame Republican budget cuts (even though you signed the sequester into law). It does make you wonder, of course, how many of the criminals wreaking havoc on the streets right now could be locked up if only the administration cared a whit. Then again, it takes an awful lot of ICE's resources just to stop guys like these three from sneaking into the country:
Nice reporting by the Washington Times of a perfectly horrible act by the Obama Administration last year. You heard about Obama's hissy fit in releasing throngs of illegal aliens, many of them known to be serious crime threats, all to demonstrate the horrors of budget sequestration. Well the overall numbers of Homeland Security's actions last year are now in, and they're not pretty.
