Republicans incensed at release of immigrants awaiting hearings
In this undated photo, immigrants walk to hearings at the Stewart Detention Center in Lupmkin, Ga. A week before mandatory budget cuts go into effect across the government, the Department of Homeland Security has started releasing illegal immigrants being held in immigration jails across the country, Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2013. Gillian Christensen, an ICE spokeswoman, said ICE has reviewed “several hundred cases” of immigrants being held in jails around the country and released them in the last week. They have been “placed on an appropriate, more cost-effective form of supervised release,” she said. (AP Photo/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Jeremy Redmon)
PHOENIX (AP) — Republican Gov. Jan Brewer says she’s appalled to hear that the Department of Homeland Security has begun releasing hundreds of illegal immigrants from custody.
It’s the first of potentially thousands of immigrants to soon be freed before mandatory federal budget cuts go into effect.
The Obama administration has been issuing dire warnings about the impact of the automatic budget cuts.
A spokesperson for ICE told Talking Points Memo, those being released will still need to appear before an Immigration judge and their cases continue.
“The detainees who’ve been released can be characterized as non-criminals and other low risk offenders who do not have serious criminal histories that would subject them to mandatory detention,” spokeswoman Barbara Gonzalez told TPM on Wednesday. “Detainees with serious criminal histories are a detention priority and have not been released.”
Brewer calls the releases granted before Friday’s deadline for automatic budget cuts “pure political posturing.”
Brewer says “this represents a return to exactly the kind of catch-and-release procedures that have long made a mockery of our country’s immigration system.”
She adds that public safety may be threatened by the immigrants‘ release.
ICE officials say the immigrants released have been placed on “an appropriate, more cost-effective form of supervised release.”
I firmly believe that President Obama is deliberately trying to destroy any chance for Immigration reform in the near future. In the last year he has implemented a watered down dream act, has dismissed immigration cases by the tens of thousands, released detained aliens, and now says that he will remove 5000 border patrol agents. I am an immigration advocate and not opposed to any of these actions per se, but, when the republicans seem open to immigration reform, it seems to me that the President is doing everything in his power to enflame the anti-immigrant forces. When one wishes to broker an honest reform, especially one which is as divisive as the immigration issue, then it seems that it is not good policy to constantly poke a stick in the eye of the opposition. I believe that immigration reform will fail once again, but at least the President will be able to blame those damn republicans, which I suppose will advance his real agenda,whatever that may be.