The Obama Administration seems to have capitulated in the wake of a two-year surge of immigrant youths across the border.
It has effectively issued a stand down order to U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents that includes the requirement to not order illegals to appear at deportation hearings and to not track illegals once they are released.
The president of the National Border Patrol council, Brandon Judd, stated, “We might as well abolish our immigration laws altogether.”
Judd testified that the Obama Administration’s policy shift is could be interpreted as acknowledgement that their previous position had failed and the administration was embarrassed that just over half of illegals ordered to appear in court actually do.
Judd testified before the House Judiciary Committee immigration subcommittee, “The willful failure to show up for court appearances by persons that were arrested and released by the Border Patrol has become an extreme embarrassment for the Department of Homeland Security. It has been so embarrassing that DHS and the U.S. Attorney’s office has come up with a new policy.”
Judd described the new policy “makes mandatory the release, without an NTA [Notice to Appear order], of any person arrested by the Border Patrol for being in the country illegally, as long as they do not have a previous felony arrest conviction and as long as they claim to have been continuously in the United States since January of 2014. The operative word in this policy is ‘claim.’ The policy does not require the person to prove they have been here which is the same burden placed on them during deportation proceedings. Instead, it simply requires them to claim to have been here since January of 2014.”
He re-emphasized that the agency had been told to not track the illegals.
“Not only do we release these individuals that by law are subject to removal proceedings, we do it without any means of tracking their whereabouts. Agents believe this exploitable policy was set in place because DHS was embarrassed at the sheer number of those who choose not to follow the law by showing up for their court appearances. In essence, we pull these persons out of the shadows and into the light just to release them right back to those same shadows from whence they came,” he said.
Judd also indicated that, along with the thousands of Latino youths capitalizing on the go-free policy are hundreds of criminal foot soldiers.
“Immigration laws today appear to be mere suggestions. There are little or no consequences for breaking the laws and that fact is well known in other countries. If government agencies like DHS or CBP are allowed to bypass Congress by legislating through policy, we might as well abolish our immigration laws altogether,” Judd concluded.