The opening section of the Morning Jolt spells out why Republicans would be fools to even consider any “comprehensive immigration reform” in the lame-duck session . . . or before the end of the Obama administration, really . . .
Obama Administration Released Illegal Immigrants Charged With Homicide
This administration lies, and lies, and lies:
New records contradict the Obama administration’s assurances to Congress and the public that the 2,200 people it freed from immigration jails last year to save money had only minor criminal records.
The records, obtained by USA TODAY, show immigration officials released some undocumented immigrants who had faced far more serious criminal charges, including people charged with kidnapping, sexual assault, drug trafficking and homicide.
The release sparked a furor in Congress. Republican lawmakers accused the Obama administration of setting dangerous criminals free. In response, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said it had released “low-risk offenders who do not have serious criminal records,” a claim the administration repeated to the public and to members of Congress.
The new records, including spreadsheets and hundreds of pages of e-mails, offer the most detailed information yet about the people ICE freed as it prepared for steep, across-the-government spending cuts in February 2013. They show that although two-thirds of the people who were freed had no criminal records, several had been arrested or convicted on charges more severe than the administration had disclosed.
Notice how many advocates of “comprehensive immigration reform” will ignore this inconvenient story and continue insisting the administration can be trusted to sort through the 11 million or so illegal immigrants and sort out the ones who are a danger to Americans.
This is actually the administration’s second lie on the matter:
The director of U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, John Morton, said his agency had released 2,228 illegal immigrants during that period for what he called “solely budgetary reasons.” The figure was significantly higher than the “few hundred” immigrants the Obama administration had publicly acknowledged were released under the budget-savings process. He testified during a hearing by a House appropriations subcommittee.
The allegedly cruel, xenophobic, and ignorant border-security crowd said that if we stopped deporting children who came to the United States illegally, it would create an incentive for more of them — and this summer they were proven right. Those same critics, mostly but not entirely on the right, argued that the administration saw illegal immigrants as a source of future votes, and put that goal over all other priorities and considerations. For this claim, they were mocked and derided; administration defenders insisted our government would never do that.
Shortly after his administration told this lie, Obama went to Ohio State and told the graduates to “reject” cynical voices telling them that government was the problem, that it was incompetent, and that it couldn’t be trusted.