ICE Gets Overwhelmed: A Good Thing
By Greg L | 8 April 2008 | Illegal Aliens, Crime, Prince William County | 50 Comments
The Washington Times reports that the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement is working with Prince William County officials to resolve a problem with ICE taking criminal illegal aliens from the Adult Detention Center within the time period that was agreed to in the 287(g) Program Memorandum of Understanding. Because the program has exceeded expectations, ICE feels a little overwhelmed by the number of aliens being identified through the program, not only in Prince William County, but the increasing number of other jurisdictions that are participating in the program. While it’s disappointing that the federal government is having trouble with the execution of this program, it’s not like the federal government ever seems to get something like this right the first time.
But that’s OK. Unless localities were flooding ICE with deportation requests, ICE would never have the basis to go to Congress and make a legitimate case for more resources, which they clearly need. If this flood of illegal aliens coming from localities wasn’t happening, the normal business-as-usual mentality of any government bureaucracy would be in effect, and as long as ICE was doing something — no matter how inconsequential it happened to be — they’d be considered entirely successful and never get additional resources that would translate into additional capacity. The only way you can get a government agency to fully do it’s job, and have the rationale for demanding the additional resources necessary to fully do the job, is to make it painfully clear that it’s performance is woefully inadequate.
The federal government absolutely needs this sort of wake-up call. While resources are doled out to ICE and the Border Patrol with a teaspoon, bucketloads of illegal aliens enter the country every year and they place a tremendous burden on state and local governments. If a locality deliberately tries to neck down the volume of deportation requests, there’s not a chance that this will inspire Congress to provide the resources to ICE to do the job it has been charged with. But if you shoot ICE with a firehose volume of illegal aliens that they’ve failed to previously deal with, the howls of pain and anguish not only get these folks running to Congress begging for more resources, but you give them the ammunition they need in order to make a strong case for them.
If the following quote manages to get lots of folks in Virginia as outraged as it should, it will be exactly the sort of ammunition needed:
Last year, ICE officials were notified roughly 12,000 times about illegal immigrants in Virginia jails, but picked up just 700 of them.
I’d really like to see what the crimes were that these illegal aliens committed, but didn’t qualify them for making the cut. If despite all local and state efforts, we are releasing criminal illegal aliens who were convicted of sex crimes, criminal gang participation, or other egregious violations of the law back into our communities when state or local law enforcement properly determined that these folks were so dangerous that they should be deported, this could ignite a firestorm. The legitimate question isn’t whether we should make it easier for the federal government to not do it’s job, it is why in the hell the federal government isn’t doing the job that it promised us it would do.
Government responds to pain. I’m sure ICE is going to try to get it’s act in gear here in order to protect the reputation of the agency, and our local elected officials are clearly going to make that happen. As the pressure mounts for ICE to do it’s job, that’s going to help ICE get the resources it needs to do that job, and not only will Prince William County win as a result, but every other jurisdiction participating in the Section 287(g) Program will as well. This isn’t a time to throw out hands up and surrender to the influx of illegal aliens that have flooded our area, it’s time to start throwing rocks at the federal government and make it surrender to the will of the people.
Let’s start throwing those rocks.
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Absolutely right about helping ICE get what they need, Greg!! …and while immigration enforcement IS a federal responsibility, the federal government just isn’t living up to that responsibility. It should and I wish it would, but the fact that PWC is taking action to protect the local citizenry from those who violate federal law (and in so doing, become illegal aliens) is the best way I can imagine to get the point across that we want the problem fixed.
The question is, “are we a sovereign country or are we just a settlement of people”? I think most here know the answer to that question.
Greg, it would be easier to agree with you on this if you had ever taken our Republican members of Congress or the Bush administration to task for this. At most you make vague references to the Federal Government. If there was a Democrat or Independent in the White House or representing us for a long period of time in Congress you would be calling them out regularly by name on this. That’s one of the reasons a lot of us who want to agree with you find it hard. You wear partisan blinders most of the time and give a free pass to most Republicans who stick their head in the sand on illegal immigration.
[Ed note: I guess I wasted my time talking about Juan McAmnesty, then. Oh well.]
Maybe we need more Guantanamo like prisons out in the open where the climate is warm. Arizona, Florida, Texas and these area’s need the Feds to open up detention centers out in the open, in the brush, surrounded by wire and guards.
Not mean’t to degrade or be funny but this is a option!
I hate to go negative this morning, but it’s just how I feel right now. I doubt congress will do anything about illegal immigration until they see how the election will unfold. If the Dems are in the White House (which if I had to bet right now I’d say they will be), and control both houses of congress, all of our kicking and screaming will fall on deaf ears. And while some battles will have been won at the local level, as the staunch patriotic Senator Harry “the sniffle” Reid once said - the “war will be lost”.
Someone please cheer me up, because I don’t know where my country is or who my countrymen are anymore. It seems the mental disorder that is liberalism has plagued the nation, and there is no stopping the infection.
Does anyone have a plan B? Beuller? Beuller?
MdMan, there’s a single soldier on Capitol Hill this morning with the enormous task of convincing surrender-minded non-patriots that defeat in Iraq will bring dishonor to us all, a proposition somewhat elemental for you, but not for the politician invested in political nuance and re-election gamemanship. A soldier alone cannot stop this infection, but he can communicate truth. If we all do just that much, as this website does, the landscape will change for the better before you are even aware of it.
MdMan I think the mental disorder of so-called conservatism as practiced by the GOP contributed as well. The mad rush to reduce wages for the benefit of the wealthy is the root cause of this problem, not liberalism.
I hope none of you who are against illegal immigration plan to vote for Juan McCain. This guy IS the problem.
Rick - what the hell are you talking about? Give me examples.
In case you haven’t been paying attention, true conservatives (and I don’t include McCain here but he’s still better than the 2 patently unqualified Dems embarrasing the nation right now) favor capitalism which tends to set a fair market wage for services with out government interfernce.
The liberal agenda is tending more and more toward socialism, which leads to government interfernce in the free market and dependency on govt by the people. These are the very principles are country was NOT founded on. I say, no thank you!
Maybe you learned something different about economics and civics in a liberal public school.
Pshaw, Rick Bently….
You have something against a man getting rich?? What does “rich” mean, anyway? Do you have the right to decide what constitutes “being rich”? I think not. It is the “rich” (businessman/owner) who pays the salaries of labor as the market dictates…and the market dictates based upon what a person can contribute…and skilled contribute more than unskilled.
If your salary is insufficient, have you ever considered doing something to make yourself more skilled, more in demand, so you can demand a larger salary? Oh no, I get it, you want someone else to do that part, to go get the education/training to make the big-bucks so you can sit on the sidelines asking for your share of what they’ve worked for.
That just not the way we’re set-up in this country although there ARE countries like that.
The directive of King George which led to the creation of DHS is at the root of the failure of many of our government departments to perform as we would like. It is to the credit of many dedicated workers whose efforts to overcome the problems created when you merge 22 existing federal agencies into a new single department. A congressional report released July 2007 revealed that DHS still had some 24 percent vacancies in top department positions. This agency only came on line in 2003. We need to give support any way we can.
Freedom - you steered way away from anything I said, towards your own dialogue on capitalism. I’m doing fine, I make a good living. Perhaps someday you could intelligently discuss the illegal immigration phenomenon and its roots and causes. Note that the GOP is nominating for President a man who fights as much for illegal immigration and another round of amnesty as he does for anything else.
I’m not suggesting Barak Obama is any more than slightly better on the issue - though I think he is SLIGHTLY better (his book indicates at least an understanding of the issue). Me, I wouldn’t vote for either one. They, the elitists who run our government, are the root cause of the problem of illegal immigration in America.
It just goes to show that illegals are not just here to work and to raise families. The fact the County is picking up more and more is even more of a reason to have this program, and to expand it as much as possible.
MdMan, you don’t get it…it’s Bush Administration that won’t do anything about aliens, their buddies in Agrobusiness and construction want the cheaplabor.
Federal Dysfunctional is spelled “ICE.”
Behind the showboat headlines and isolated sting operations launched by ICE, the Feds are pathetic. The law is clear. Illegal aliens (not immigrants) must be apprehended, arrested, and deported. How pathetic is it to think the County needs a 287(g) Program Memorandum of Understanding so ICE will do what it is suppose to do?
ICE is a political football and ICE employees know it all too well. We need a return to the days of the Eisenhower Administration and Operation Wetback. there is NO expeditious removal of illegal aliens from the interior of the USA. The Prince William County experience is only the tip of the ICEberg. The ICE performance picture across the USA is an insult to US citizens and a deliberate attempt by both political party leaderships to mask the seriousness of the situation.
US citizens need to claim back their American sovereignty and demand their Members of Congress and the White House do the same. Enforce the law. Illegal is still illegal. Fire up the politicians and the buses today! Deport illegal aliens. Demand ICE remove all incarcerated illegal aliens with 24-hours of notification by local law enforcement - no excuses!
Face it folks, ICE is a bunch of lazy folks - as is many Federal workers. I think I can say that as I have worked for the Feds for 30 years and see the laziness. Further, I work right next to an ICE facility and when I jokingly ask them why they aren’t down the street at the 7-11 picking up illegals, they laugh. I have seen on many, many levels that the Feds will not be helping us out.
Harry said on 8 Apr 2008 at 12:24 pm:
MdMan, you don’t get it…it’s Bush Administration that won’t do anything about aliens, their buddies in Agrobusiness and construction want the cheaplabor.
Bill Clinton did nothing about the problem of illegal immigration and decimated our military during his “reign.”
C. Armstrong said on 8 Apr 2008 at 1:09 pm:
Face it folks, ICE is a bunch of lazy folks - as is many Federal workers. I think I can say that as I have worked for the Feds for 30 years and see the laziness. Further, I work right next to an ICE facility and when I jokingly ask them why they aren’t down the street at the 7-11 picking up illegals, they laugh. I have seen on many, many levels that the Feds will not be helping us out.
ICE answers to a higher authority and when they are told to “COOL IT” (no pun intended) they have no choice. Fish rot from the top down.
What is Operation Wetback mentioned in an earlier post?
Operation Wetback was a 1954 project by INS ordered by Pres. Eisenhower. Ca 4 million supposedly illegal immigrants fr southwestern US with a focus on Mexicans, were repatriated. Of course, Wetback was the derogatory name for those who had crossed the Rio Grande.
Before that, 1929-37, there was a program “Mexican Repatriation”. Circa 500.000, half of whom were born in the US, were deported. Approx. 60% were children born in the US and others who were legal citizens.
C. Armstrong - you ought to read about this. It’s interesting. When there was a labor shortage immediatly after the war, Mexicans were allowed back. The large fruit and vegetable farmers were allowed to hire Mexicans who were given permission to cross the border and go back home when the season ended and then come back the following year.
P.S. Don’t jump on me if any of this is wrong. I’m no specialist.
Rick Bentley said: “The mad rush to reduce wages for the benefit of the wealthy is the root cause of this problem, not liberalism.”
No, I didn’t steer away from anything you said….you’re obviously a wealth redistribution liberal socialist through and through…and no, I do not support George Bush’s, nor John McCain’s positions re illegal aliens…nor the position of most democrats in Congress.
A couple of things to consider about the Republican nominee though: 1) John McCain didn’t go to Kenya to campaign for a Jihadist and 2) I have yet to see John McCain’s spiritual leader and mentor that is comparable to the anti-American fanatic and racist, Jeremiah Wright.
If I ever see those characteristics in John McCain, he’s gone too, but until then, he’s the best of the current options. Now, before you vote, you just might want to consider what you DO know about the candidates.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wetback
999, another duped so-called conservative who can’t think beyond what he’s been fed by the elitists who run the party he identifies with. Clinton decimated the military? Highly arguable, but not even relevant.
Operation Wetback is well described at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wetback . President Eisenhower was concerned about illegal immigration in the Western region of the US, provided disincentive for the illegals, and they left (by the millions). Funny to reflect on every time a Juan McCain or a Ted kennedy or a Lindsay Graham or a Barak Obama makes the assertion that it’s impossible to get people to leave.
C. Armstrong said on 8 Apr 2008 at 1:57 pm:
What is Operation Wetback mentioned in an earlier post?
That was when Presiden Eisenhower deported all Mexican illegals in the U.S.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0706/p09s01-coop.html
More on 999’s comment. This is the reflexive non-thinking of modern partisan politics - my guy did bad, but your guy did bad too, and blah blah blah. Let’s be objective about this for a minute. Regardless of Bill Clinton’s legacy, George W has a singular lack of acheivement in this area which speaks to his complete duplicity and lack of integrity. He presided over an era in which he spent billions upon billions on so-called “Homeland Security” while leaving our borders wide open and failing to act on the corruption of our ID system(s).
Why is it that no terrorists have yet bothered to walk across the border passing for Hispanic, get a job in a food processing plant, and poison food? Even a job at McDonalds provides ample opportunity for jihad. Only because the whole Homeland Security thing always is and was overblown. We’re not under active attack. If we were - the things this President has done would hardly bother to stop it.
From the Monitor
One day in 1954, Border Patrol agent Walt Edwards picked up a newspaper in Big Spring, Texas, and saw some startling news. The government was launching an all-out drive to oust illegal aliens from the United States.
The orders came straight from the top, where the new president, Dwight Eisenhower, had put a former West Point classmate, Gen. Joseph Swing, in charge of immigration enforcement.
General Swing’s fast-moving campaign soon secured America’s borders - an accomplishment no other president has since equaled. Illegal migration had dropped 95 percent by the late 1950s.
Several retired Border Patrol agents who took part in the 1950s effort, including Mr. Edwards, say much of what Swing did could be repeated today.
“Some say we cannot send 12 million illegals now in the United States back where they came from. Of course we can!” Edwards says.
Donald Coppock, who headed the Patrol from 1960 to 1973, says that if Swing and Ike were still running immigration enforcement, “they’d be on top of this in a minute.”
William Chambers, another ’50s veteran, agrees. “They could do a pretty good job” sealing the border.
Edwards says: “When we start enforcing the law, these various businesses are, on their own, going to replace their [illegal] workforce with a legal workforce.”
While Congress debates building a fence on the border, these veterans say other actions should have higher priority.
1. End the current practice of taking captured Mexican aliens to the border and releasing them. Instead, deport them deep into Mexico, where return to the US would be more costly.
2. Crack down hard on employers who hire illegals. Without jobs, the aliens won’t come.
3. End “catch and release” for non-Mexican aliens. It is common for illegal migrants not from Mexico to be set free after their arrest if they promise to appear later before a judge. Few show up.
The Patrol veterans say enforcement could also be aided by a legalized guest- worker program that permits Mexicans to register in their country for temporary jobs in the US. Eisenhower’s team ran such a program. It permitted up to 400,000 Mexicans a year to enter the US for various agriculture jobs that lasted for 12 to 52 weeks.
• John Dillin is former managing editor of the Monitor.
Off topic but IMO McCain and Obama are both decent men who are personally likeable but entirely beholden to mistaken precepts and partisan interests. Nice guys but either is going to be a pretty bad President. I’m not sure I agree that the 71 year-old who goes on and on about spending 100 years in Iraq is the best choice. I remember how off-base he’s been frequently in his pompous pronouncements about events in Iraq, to end up screaming at reporters who point out how off-base he is. McCain doesn’t know truth from fantasy as far as I can tell. Senility and dementia may already be in evidence - and I say that with no malice.
Virginia should be putting those 10,000 “undocumented” prisoners to good use: The Commonwealth shouldn’t have to pay for a single construction worker for any project that we initiate. Roads, schools, buildings—There’s no reason not to use this massive workforce to reduce the overall cost of the projects we build. If these people are in prison for breaking a serious law (yeah, maybe this doesn’t make sense for lesser offenses), don’t you think it makes sense to put them to hard work to pay the Commonwealth back for it?
Not as bad as Hillary or Barack!!
Yep, Anon., chain gangs; an old southern institution.
Let’s bring it back. Maybe you’d like to be the foreman at one of these projects? What a wonderful world it would be should all the undocumented prisoners be used for state construction.
Have you ever heard of SABOTAGE? The Danes were famous for that during the German occupation>
Oh, Anon., I forgot. If you should “use” 10,000 illegal for construction work, what do you think would happen to all American construction workers. THINK!
Krutis said on 8 Apr 2008 at 4:17 pm:
Yep, Anon., chain gangs; an old southern institution.
Let’s bring it back. Maybe you’d like to be the foreman at one of these projects? What a wonderful world it would be should all the undocumented prisoners be used for state construction.
GREAT idea! We could get our area roads back in shape and clean all of the cans and litter out of the street gutters.
/\/\3|)iç 64 (Winner of the BVBL 40k and 50k post award) said on 8 Apr 2008 at 4:14 pm:
# Rick Bentley said on 8 Apr 2008 at 10:31 am:
I hope none of you who are against illegal immigration plan to vote for Juan McCain. This guy IS the problem.
Not as bad as Hillary or Barack!!
I wouldn’t bet on that. Look at his last fiasco with the Kennedy/McCain bill. A leopard doesn’t change his spots and he avoids the amnesty question like the plague. He will not answer a direct question on amnesty for 12-20 million.
Anon. said on 8 Apr 2008 at 3:53 pm:
Virginia should be putting those 10,000 “undocumented” prisoners to good use:
Timmy Kane would never go for that. These are just poor people looking to do the jobs Americans won’t according to him. He spent too much time in Central America.
Rick Bentley said on 8 Apr 2008 at 3:30 pm:
999, another duped so-called conservative who can’t think beyond what he’s been fed by the elitists who run the party he identifies with.
Count me as an Independent. Who runs that party?
Rick Bentley said on 8 Apr 2008 at 3:37 pm:
Why is it that no terrorists have yet bothered to walk across the border passing for Hispanic, get a job in a food processing plant, and poison food?
Where did you come up with facts for that brilliant statement. NO TERRORISTS HAVE YET BOTHERED TO WALK ACROSS THE BORDER……..
I guess we can all sleep better now that you know that for a fact.
999 - 10,000 prisoners doing work that legal American workers can do? We would have 10,000 Americans out of work because the work is being done by ILLEGALS. Criminals to boot! Aren’t we trying to get the illegals out in order to get jobs for the legals? Plueeeze!
C. Armstrong said on 8 Apr 2008 at 1:09 pm:
Face it folks, ICE is a bunch of lazy folks - as is many Federal workers. I think I can say that as I have worked for the Feds for 30 years and see the laziness. Further, I work right next to an ICE facility and when I jokingly ask them why they aren’t down the street at the 7-11 picking up illegals, they laugh. I have seen on many, many levels that the Feds will not be helping us out.
Are you assuming those ICE employees are in a position of authority to pick up illegals? How do you know what their jobs are? I’m sure they don’t really think you’re funny when you ask them why they’re not at 7-Eleven, and I’m sure you’re not the first person to have ever cracked that joke to them.
As far as the laziness you cite, I personally work with many very dedicated Federal employees who go “over and above” and get paid less and have less status than their compatriots in the private sector. You can’t blame the workers for a gross failure in leadership–if incompetence is tolerated, it had to have started (and continues) at the top.
McScamnesty is a “Trojan Horse”, and is hell bent on giving amnesty to 20 million illegal colonizers.
He is no different from Hillary or Obama.
Thanks to BOOSH, McCain and all the NWO elite “money whores and Robber Barons”, {their handlers}, they have destroyed the repub party.
They no longer represent conservatives, and I will not be voting for the “lesser of two evils” in Nov.
Rockefeller GOP/ GOBs/ RINOs,…RIP!
I think the program they had in the “50s”, {during Ike’s term}, was called the “Bracero prog”?
Tazzmax: You’re correct. It was the bracero program. We brought in Mexican workers as needed and sent them back when the work was done. No bringing in extended family and no producing anchor babies. And since this was pre-LBJ’s Great Society–no welfare. It worked because the word from President Eisenhower was: illegal aliens not allowed.
Interesting reading about the Bracero Program, also called the “Labor Importation Program”, which lasted 1942-1963.
Once used, they were discarded.
59 arrested today at a northern Virginia resort:
WASHINGTON — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested more than 50 illegal immigrants employed by a luxury resort in northern Virginia Tuesday morning.
Agents interviewed about 100 employees, which led to 53 arrests at the resort, officials said. Six more illegal immigrants were arrested outside the resort. Two woman were released at the resort because of undisclosed humanitarian concerns.
The arrests stem from an investigation that began in July after a routine inspection of the resort’s I-9 employment forms. Agents suspected that many employees were using fraudulent documents or stolen identities to get their jobs.
“Today’s enforcement action is part of ICE’s nationwide aggressive pursuit of unauthorized workers and employers who violate the law,” said Mark X. McGraw, deputy special agent in charge of ICE’s D.C. office of investigations. “Companies that use cheap, illegal alien labor as a business model should be on notice that ICE is dramatically enhancing its enforcement efforts against illegal employment schemes.”
The 59 people arrested are from El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras, Bolivia, Peru and Argentina. They all face removal proceedings. Personnel from ICE, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Division of Immigration Health Services will interview those arrested and have access to social services in case of any medical, sole-caregiver or other humanitarian situations. ICE will determine if the detainees will remain in custody or be considered for humanitarian release.
[Ed note: good catch - this deserves it’s own post.]
There’s a “luxury resort” in Leesburg? Where?
Krutis said on 8 Apr 2008 at 5:53 pm:
999 - 10,000 prisoners doing work that legal American workers can do? We would have 10,000 Americans out of work because the work is being done by ILLEGALS. Criminals to boot! Aren’t we trying to get the illegals out in order to get jobs for the legals? Plueeeze!
What do you want the prisoners doing then? Sitting in their cells watching the “soaps” all day? GET REAL!
monticup said on 8 Apr 2008 at 9:29 pm:
There’s a “luxury resort” in Leesburg? Where?
That would most likely be Lansdowne Conference Center and Resort. Gently nestled in beautiful Loudoun County Virginia along the banks of the majestic Potomac River, the infamous Goose Creek and only minutes form historic Leesburg.
999 @ 10:47 pm - What do you want the 10,000 Americans, whose jobs have been filled by prisoners, to do? Go on welfare? YOU try to get real!
Citizen 12 - You are correct. A friend who lives there invited me to lunch and we toured the facilities. It IS a beautiful place. Residents must be over 55 and you got to go through a gate to enter, naturally! (”we don’t want just anybody walking around”)
I want to continue to underscore my contempt for Juan McCain. I hope Greg starts some threads and allows continued dialogue about whether a man like McCain, Mr. my-friends-let’s-give-them-another-Amnesty is fit for anyone’s vote.
I have a lot of contempt for the Bush Administration on the illegal immigration issue - the way they undermine the Border patrol, the way they do nothing for Ramos and Compeon and have no issue with giving amnesty to drug dealers for the sole purpose of putting 2 BP agents behind bars, to placate drug smugglers. The way they let a system evolve where employers don’t quite have to do real checks on SSNs, and are left unaccountable for systematically hiring illegals. The cow-towing to Fox’s Mexican Government which holds us in contempt. Worst of all, systematically using the reigns of power to harass anyone who tried to do the right thing - such as Bush’s Justice Department harassing the City of Manassas and attempting to intimidate them in recent years. Yeah, that was them. It wasn’t Hillary Clinton nor was it some activist judge. It was George Bush’s Justice department actively trying to beat down our local efforts to prevent overcrowding, and actively working to make illegal aliens feel at home here.
McCain is clearly even more dedicated to amnesty and to letting tens of millions of criminals stay than Bush has been.
A vote Republican this year is a mistake. As is a vote Democrat. This issue MATTERS and what McCain tried to ram through - using false arguements and trying to dominate the vocabulary of the debate using false precepts - MATTERS.
Krutis said on 8 Apr 2008 at 11:21 pm:
Citizen 12 - You are correct. A friend who lives there invited me to lunch and we toured the facilities. It IS a beautiful place. Residents must be over 55 and you got to go through a gate to enter, naturally! (”we don’t want just anybody walking around”)
They let you in didn’t they?
The construction industry would never go for displacing their skilled workers with 10,000 aliens. Who do you think opposed all of the alien legislation introduced last session: builders, developers,manufacturers, they all want the cheaplabor, all spoke vigorously opposing restraints on aliens.