WASHINGTON (AP) – The Homeland Security Department still is requiring high-level approval before federal immigration agents can arrest fugitives, a rule quietly imposed by the Bush administration days before the election of Barack Obama, whose aunt has been living in the United States illegally. The unusual directive from the Homeland Security Department came amid concerns that such arrests might generate “negative media or congressional interest,” according to a newly disclosed federal document obtained by The Associated Press. The directive makes clear that U.S. officials worried about possible election implications of arresting Zeituni Onyango, the half-sister of Obama’s late father, who at the time was living in public housing in Boston. She is now believed to be living in Cleveland. A copy of the directive, “Fugitive Case File Vetting Prior to Arrest,” was released to the AP just over two months after it was requested under the Freedom of Information Act.
If we’re to hamstring our law-enforcement agents because of worries over what the New York Times might write, we are no longer enforcing the law, are we? A nation of laws, remember? (Wendell Phillips apparently was only half-right: Not “a government of men and morning newspapers,” after all, just newspapers.)
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