AUSTIN, Texas — Last month, records were produced showing that officials with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) misled Congress and the American people when they claimed that 2,200 undocumented immigrants released from detention facilities to save money were only “low-risk offenders who do not have serious criminal records.” In fact, the released detainees included some who had been charged or convicted of serious, violent crimes, including kidnapping, sexual assault, drug trafficking, and homicide, and new records requested by Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) include a list of zip codes where these detainees were released, including several in Texas.
In fact, the 2,200 who were released because of ICE’s claims that they needed to save money were only less than one percent of the total criminal aliens released by ICE last year. According to a letter to Grassley from ICE Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Thomas J. Winkowski, “ICE released 36,007 criminal aliens from ICE custody” in 2013. Winkowski also provided, pursuant to Grassley’s request, a list of zip codes where the criminal aliens were released. Blogger Doug Ross took these zip codes and converted them into a list of cities across the United States. California, Florida, and New York cities are a significant part of the list, and Texas cities on the list include Cypress, Houston, and Katy.
The letter from Winkowski also lists the “name and location of the detention facilities from which the aliens with homicide-related convictions were released in FY 2013.” Texas locations include the Dallas Field Office Hold Room, the El Paso Service Processing Center, the Houston Contract Detention Facility, and the South Texas Detention Complex.
Winkowski concludes the letter by writing that “to protect national security and public safety…I am instituting new procedures requiring that an appropriate senior-level supervisor must approve before ICE releases potential dangerous individuals.”
Back in May, Jessica Vaughn, the Director of Policy Studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, published more detailed information about the 36,007 criminal aliens released in 2013. These people had, altogether, nearly 88,000 convictions, including “193 homicide convictions (including one willful killing of a public official with gun), 426 sexual assault convictions, 303 kidnapping convictions, 1,075 aggravated assault convictions, 1,160 stolen vehicle convictions, 9,187 dangerous drug convictions, 16,070 drunk or drugged driving convictions, [and] 303 flight escape convictions.”
As Breitbart Texas reported, Texas Senator John Cornyn has called for a Senate hearing to investigate how “the Obama Administration released dangerous criminals into society and then misled Congress and the American people about it.”
Photo: Public domain image by U.S. Department of Homeland Security via Wikipedia.
Follow Sarah Rumpf on Twitter @rumpfshaker
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