Politico
By Seung Min Kim and Lauren French
January 28, 2016
The
Obama administration is continuing to defend raids targeting immigrants
in the United States illegally in a new letter to Capitol Hill,
renewing frustration from Democratic
lawmakers who have lashed out against the administration over the
controversial strategy.
In
a Jan. 27 letter to Democratic lawmakers, Secretary of State John Kerry
and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson stressed that for many of
the women and children
from Central America caught at the border, “the reality is that not all
those … seek or successfully establish that they qualify for
[humanitarian] relief.”
More
than 140 House Democrats, as well as 22 of their Senate counterparts,
have signed onto letters to the administration denouncing the raids and
urging officials to
take a different tack to stem the recent wave of illegal migration at
the southern border.
“We
will continue to conduct enforcement actions in line with existing laws
and policies, including the apprehension and removal of individuals
with final orders of removal
who have exhausted or waived all appeals,” Kerry and Johnson wrote to
lawmakers in the three-page letter, obtained by POLITICO. “The
enforcement actions referenced in your letter are consistent with this
approach.”
The
administration has shown no signs of backing off the raids since they
were disclosed in late December, and the first of the operations took
place earlier this month.
On Jan. 13, the administration said it would launch new efforts to
expand access to the refugee admissions program for people from El
Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala — a move welcomed by Democrats and
advocates, but one that did not ease their concerns about
the raids.
“I’m
certainly disappointed,” Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois,
who has called on the administration to halt the raids, said in an
interview Thursday. “Let
us deport everyone who is a danger to this country, but the notion of
deporting people who are innocent, are no danger to this country,
splitting up families, that should not be our policy.”
But
there is little Democrats on Capitol Hill can do aside from continuing
to press the administration. The issue arose during a private
question-and-answer session with
Vice President Joe Biden at the House Democratic retreat in Baltimore,
when Biden stressed that the administration is allowed to prioritize how
they enforce immigration laws and pushed back against the notion that
these raids don't amount to "mass deportations,"
according to a source in the room.
Biden
said the total number of immigrants already deported to their home
countries was 67 out of the 121 swept up in the raids, although a
spokeswoman for Immigration
and Customs Enforcement said it was 77 people.
"He
made it very clear that the president is trying to do this best with
the broken immigration system," House Democratic Caucus Chairman Xavier
Becerra (D-Calif.) said
of Biden's remarks. "What the vice president made clear is that not
only are they trying to do it in a constructive and legal [way], but
also in a humane way."
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
No comments:
Post a Comment