GOP grills administration over immigration practice
WASHINGTON — In a dress rehearsal for electionyear bickering over immigration, Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano and Texas Republicans tangled Wednesday over claims that the Obama administration’s selective deportation of unlawful immigrants with criminal records provides de facto amnesty to millions of other undocumented immigrants who remain in the country.
The GOP lawmakers accused the Democratic administration of adopting a look-the-other-way policy on enforcing deportation laws against an estimated 11 million residents who have entered or remain in the United States without legal status.
But Napolitano, the former governor and attorney general of Arizona, fought back by arguing that her department is making tough choices with limited resources.
The Obama administration deported more unlawful immigrants last year than at anytime in the six-year history of the department, Napolitano declared. A record 55 percent of the 396,906 people returned to their homelands had been convicted of felonies or misdemeanors, including 1,119 murderers and 5,848 convicted of sexual offenses.
The administration also is reviewing more than 280,000 pending deportation cases with an eye to dropping proceedings against those people whose lone crime may have been crossing the border illegally.
“It does sound like the administration has implemented de facto amnesty for a large segment of those who are here illegally,” said Rep. John Cul- berson, R-houston.
“Some say you’ve given those people amnesty,” added Rep. Harold Rogers, R-KY., chairman of the full 50-member House Appropriations Committee. “They no longer need to worry about being here illegally.”
Napolitano countered: “I think the ‘amnesty’ term is quite frankly way too overused with respect to immigration. This is an area that profoundly needs to be re-examined by Congress.”
The rhetorical skirmishing came as Napolitano presented her department’s $59 billion spending request to Congress, kicking off months of hearings and debate on funding operations by the Homeland Security Department’s 230,000 personnel for fiscal 2013.
The department, created after the 9/11 attacks, remains “focused on smart and effective enforcement of U.S. immigration laws” with “clear enforcement priorities” emphasizing “the identification and removal of criminal aliens and repeat immigration law violators, recent border entrants and immigration fugitives,” Napolitano said.
In a separate hearing by the House Committee on Homeland Security, Rep. Michael Mccaul, R-austin, faulted Napolitano for plans to cut support for the so-called 287(g) program that enables local law enforcement agencies to link up with federal immigration authorities to check the immigration status of arrested suspects.
Without the program, “law enforcement officers will be blind to the legal status of thousands of illegal immigrants who commit crimes in our neighborhoods, allowing them to avoid deportation,” said Mccaul, a former federal prosecutor and deputy attorney general of Texas.