A high-ranking immigration enforcement official confirmed that President Barack Obama’s “priority enforcement program” has blocked the deportation and repatriation of many illegal immigrants.
“Isn’t it true that ICE officers get calls [about detained illegals] every day from police officers and departments all over America … and you’re not responding to them because they don’t meet the guidelines established by the president?” Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions asked during a subcommittee hearing Thursday.
“That is true,” confirmed Tom Homan, the executive associate director for enforcement and removal operations at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
“So it’s not true that the reason your [repatriation] numbers are down [66 percent since 2012] is because you don’t have [detained illegals] people to deport,” Sessions said. “You [do] have them to deport, but you have policies that tell you not to deport whole categories of people that are here unlawfully. Isn’t that correct?”
“That’s a factor. Yes, sir,” Homan agreed.
The Obama administration’s deportations guidelines has created “national sanctuary policies,” according to the non-partisan Centers for Immigration Studies.
Under Obama, only “certain convicted felons, offenders with three separate misdemeanor convictions, and some new illegal arrivals” can be considered for deportations, but vaguely-defined “community ties,” based on simple claims by illegal aliens can override American immigration law and make their deportations unlikely.
For example, a Honduran illegal “unaccompanied minor” named Eswin Mejia came to the U.S. in 2013. Then the Obama administration relocated him into the U.S. interior to be with his reportedly illegal alien brother, at taxpayer expense.
So, when the illegal alien was arrested after he allegedly killed a young Iowa woman while he was drunkenly street-racing — the day after she graduated college with a perfect GPA — ICE followed Obama’s guidelines and did not request a detainer to deport him if he was not convicted of vehicle offenses.
Without that ICE detainer, the illegal jumped bail before the trial, vanished and may never be brought to justice.