This morning, Homeland Security Janet Napolitano says that the several hundred illegal immigrants who were released from detention centers last week were, “very low-level, low-risk detainees.”
Boy, we better hope so.
The first illegal immigrant profiled by New York Times in its coverage of the releases… stretches the definition of “very low risk”:
Among those released in the past week was Anthony Orlando Williams, 52, a Jamaican immigrant who spent nearly three years in a detention center in Georgia.
“I’m good, man,” he said. “I’m free.”Mr. Williams, in a telephone interview from Stone Mountain, Ga., said he became an illegal immigrant when he overstayed a visa in 1991. He was detained in 2010 by a sheriff’s deputy in Gwinnett County, Ga., when it was discovered that he had violated probation for a conviction in 2005 of simple assault, simple battery and child abuse, charges that sprung from a domestic dispute with his wife at the time. He was transferred to ICE custody and has been fighting a deportation order with the help of Families for Freedom, an immigrant support group in New York.
Mr. Williams was released last Friday. “That was a long, long, long run,” he said of his detention, adding that he has an appointment this Friday at an immigration office in Atlanta at which he expects to receive the terms of his supervised release — “a list of things I have to abide by.”
If convictions for “simple assault, simple battery and child abuse” make you “low-risk,” what do you have to do for Janet Napolitano to consider you “high-risk”?