Home  News National News Immigration authorities stepping up
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Immigration authorities stepping up |
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Friday, 27 June 2008 |
Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Congress are pressuring the Bush administration to place emphasis on arresting illegal criminal immigrant activity over the arrest of illegal immigrant workers. Earlier this week, the Congressional committee approved allocating $800 million to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to make deportation of immigrants convicted of criminal activity a priority.
The additional funding would enable ICE to deport more criminals who are in jails and for fugitive immigration teams to pick up evasive wanted suspects. However, some immigration advocates are concerned that some non-criminal immigrants could be caught up in the planned escalated arrests. There is precedence for this, as records indicate that last year ICE arrested nearly six times as many illegal non-criminals compared to illegal immigrant criminals.
The increased funding related to the objective of arresting more criminal immigrants was spearheaded by Rep. David Price, (D) North Carolina, the chairman of the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee’s homeland security subcommittee. The initiative passed a House committee and is expected to be approved when it goes before the full House floor shortly. In an interview on Tuesday, Price said that everyone agrees that capturing criminal illegal immigrants should be a priority, but this has not been done.
Those opposed to the new legislation claim it focuses on too narrow a group of immigrants, and moreover, in the effort to locate the criminals ICE will also have to focus on illegal workers and their employers. Last year, arrests of illegal immigrants at the workplace increased by 816 percent over arrests in 2003. This included 4,077 undocumented immigrants who had no criminal records. While a high percentage were jailed and deported, deportation of criminal immigrants increased by only 16 percent.
Most Republicans on the appropriations committee and the homeland security subcommittee support Price’s initiative, saying that they believe a balance must be achieved with all the options for enforcing immigration laws.
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