CQ
By David Harrison
July 26, 2012
Three of the Senate’s most outspoken immigration hawks joined law enforcement officers Thursday to argue that the Obama administration’s directives would put agents and citizens at increased risk.
The news conference with Sens. David Vitter of Louisiana, Jeff Sessions of Alabama and Charles E. Grassley of Iowa showed that Republicans are not ready to let up in their criticism of the administration’s recent immigration policy announcements.
With no legislative recourse moving in Congress to fight the policies, the senators on Thursday emphasized divisions between top leaders at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and rank-and-file immigration agents tasked with carrying out the policies.
Agents “see the violence and the chaos and the lawlessness, and they have lost confidence in the leadership of the agencies,” Sessions said.
Grassley added that the administration’s action “is without legal authority, and it jeopardizes the work of those who enforce the law, and it condones breaking the law.” He said that officers “have a job to do, and they can’t do it very well when everything’s changing so quickly.”
Two major immigration announcements have rankled Republicans. John Morton, director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), said last year that his agency would only focus its deportation efforts on illegal immigrants who commit serious crimes while in the United States or who have repeatedly violated immigration laws.
Then in June, DHS said it would implement a new policy — modeled on legislation known as the DREAM Act (S 952, HR 1842) — that would grant a reprieve from deportation to young people brought to the country illegally as children provided they are enrolled in school or have a high school diploma or equivalency degree.
Officers said Thursday that the rollout of the new directives has been confusing and that they have been pressured to release people without properly checking their backgrounds.
“The administration can’t just put a policy on paper and expect it to work effectively in the field without first providing detailed written guidance and training to officers, agents and field managers,” said Chris Crane, a Utah-based ICE agent who heads the National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council, the union representing ICE agents.
“Prosecutorial discretion for ‘dreamers’ is solely based on the individuals’ claim,” Crane added, using the common term for people who would benefit from the legislation. “If an alien says they went to high school, then let them go.”
George E. McCubbin, president of the National Border Patrol Council, said that his agency also had yet to receive any written guidance, which made agents’ jobs more difficult and dangerous.
Criticism From Advocates
On the other side, immigration advocates arguing for more-lenient enforcement also have complained that last year’s policy announcement was vague and left local officers too much leeway to target people with no criminal backgrounds.
The policy, announced in a series of ICE memos, did not specify what crimes would be deemed serious enough to deport somebody, causing some of the confusion.
Administration officials say those decisions are supposed to occur on a case-by-case basis.
Republicans have denounced both of the immigration policies as “amnesty” and have vowed to challenge them.
Last month, Grassley and 19 other senators wrote to President Obama asking about the legal basis for the immigration decisions. Other Republicans have taken a more confrontational approach. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, plans to sue the administration over the June announcement.
Those efforts aren’t likely to get far, Sessions acknowledged.
“It’s difficult if you’ve got a clever chief law enforcement officer like the president who wants to create rules of engagement,” Sessions said. “We’re all looking at the next election. Gov. [Mitt] Romney has been pretty clear on this; at some point he’ll have to be asked more detail about the practical things.”
Democrats contend that the new policies are working. At a House Judiciary Committee hearing this month, ranking Democrat John Conyers Jr. of Michigan noted that border apprehensions are at a 40-year low while deportations are at the highest levels on record.
Two years ago, Congress voted to increase border security funding by $600 million, adding 1,500 border patrol agents and spending millions on new technology. Homeland Security’s strategies “are effective,” Conyers said.
But McCubbin said the decrease in border apprehension is due more to the Obama administration’s changes in “operations and strategy” rather than a reduction in illegal crossings.
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