BILL WOULD FREEZE OBAMA’S POWER TO GRANT AMNESTY
Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) is sponsoring legislation to temporarily freeze the Obama administration’s power to grant amnesty to illegal immigrants. This effort comes in response to a memo issued by the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) last week that endorsed not deporting illegal immigrants arrested for minor crimes, those attending an education center, or those with relatives in the U.S. military. Rep. Smith says that if the new guidelines are not stopped, the deportation of “millions of deportable illegal and criminal immigrants” will never happen.
FEDS DOWNPLAYED ICE CASE DISMISSALS
Newly released records show Homeland Security officials purposely misled the public and Congress last year in order to downplay “back-door amnesty” policy and practice resulting in a wave of immigration case dismissals in U.S. cities. One series of internal memos in particular orders all Houston attorneys to dismiss all new, incoming cases and thousands already on the docket that did not meet the agency’s “top priorities.” This resulted in the release of hundreds of illegal immigrants in Houston alone. A string of e-mails also shows that the stealth amnesty program had the blessing of top attorneys at ICE headquarters in Washington, DC as well as from the White House. Nationally, the numbers of cases dismissed increased about 40 percent during the 2010 fiscal year.
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