TRY 8 pro-amnesty think tank reports that enforcement works! (In other news, man bites dog.) The Migration Policy Institute found that a program fostering cooperation between federal authorities and local police — known as “287(g)” — caused illegal aliens to leave participating jurisdictions. In the Examiner’s words:
The number of illegal immigrants plummeted in Virginia and Maryland communities that cracked down on immigration violations, with many moving into neighboring localities where enforcement of those laws was far less intense.
Of course, given
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leanings, the authors’ conclusion is the opposite of what the data suggest; as my colleague Jessica Vaughan describes it:
Despite, or perhaps because of, these findings, the report’s top recommendation is that ICE should scale back the program, and permit local officers to process only the most “serious” criminal aliens, specifically those who have been convicted of felonies.
That this is not how Congress intended the 287(g) program to be used appears to be irrelevant.
I especially got a kick out of this query in the report, asked with a furrowed brow:
Does the Obama administration support universal immigration enforcement and the goal of attrition through enforcement, or does it favor targeted enforcement focusing on high-priority cases and reserving resources for other activities?
That’s not a hard question to answer! And of course it’s a disingenuous question, because they know perfectly well the answer is option 2 — but the report asks it as a way of arguing that the administration should prohibit jurisdictions from using the 287(g) program as a tool of “universal immigration enforcement.” In effect, the Obama people (and their allies at MPI and elsewhere) want to make immigration violations a secondary offense, like seat-belt laws in most states — the government can’t take action against you for them unless you do something else first. This is a sneaky kind of administrative amnesty that can sound good to the inattentive — “Let’s deport all the criminals!” — but in fact subverts the very foundations of immigration control and, with it, national sovereignty.
On the lighter side, here is the Examiner’s cover for today, with a curious pairing of headline and photo: Examiner’s NEW cover.
Those guys don’t look like they’re melting away to me!