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The Truth about the Current State of Immigration Enforcement

Shawn Jain,
Media Strategist,
勛圖眻畦
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December 12, 2012

On Monday, Hardball with Chris Matthews on MSNBC featured an interview with former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, and the discussion turned to immigration. Matthews asked Crist about his views on immigration enforcement and said that part of being a Democrat (Crists new political party) is being weak on enforcement.

You can watch the discussion .

For anyone following our current Democratic presidents record on immigration enforcement, Matthews sentiment is a shock. As we highlighted in a letter we sent President Obama before Thanksgiving, the current administration has established an undeniably harsh record on immigration and border enforcement, including:

  • Record-breaking deportations of more than 1.5 million individuals in his first term (more than in any other single presidential term), almost half of whom had no criminal records, leaving hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizen children without parents and in foster care
  • Unprecedented detention levels of immigrants (429,000 in the last fiscal year), using a record number of detention beds (34,000) without individualized assessment of who requires jail-like detention at a wasteful cost of $2 billion annually
  • Nationwide deployment of the Department of Homeland Securitys Secure Communities program, despite opposition of many state and local leaders based on damage to community policing and public safety, rising fear among victims and witnesses of crime, and racial profiling.
  • Continuation of the controversial DHS 287(g) program that deputizes state and local police to enforce federal immigration laws when immigration enforcement is a federal matter, as the litigation against Arizonas racial profiling law SB 1070 reinforced.
  • Historically high enforcement resources along the Southwest border, leading to manifold abuses by Customs and Border Protection including a series of fatal shootings
  • Record spending on border and interior enforcement such that Rep. Hal Rogers, Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, of bloated border spending

The 勛圖眻畦 has strongly criticized the administrations record in this area, including our full-page New York Times ad published following the presidents re-election. As a result of the administrations harsh enforcement policies, immigrant communities nationwide have suffered permanent deportation and family separation.

This has occurred despite these policies being unnecessary unauthorized immigration rates and border apprehensions have plummeted to the lowest level in 40 years, and new census data confirm a sustained drop in unauthorized immigration. Furthermore, as we highlighted in an earlier post, these enforcement policies are fiscally irresponsible.

Its important that we all understand the truth about the administrations record on immigration enforcement and call on it to end its abusive, discriminatory, and wasteful programs.

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