I’m waiting for Mark Krikorian to tell me what the catch is, but on the face of it, this sounds like good news:
The Obama administration is expanding a program initiated by President George W. Bush aimed at checking the immigration status of virtually every person booked into local jails. In four years, the measure could result in a tenfold increase in illegal immigrants who have been convicted of crimes and identified for deportation, current and former U.S. officials said. …
The program began as a pilot effort in October and operates in 48 counties across the country, including Fairfax County. This year, fingerprints from 1 million local jail bookings will be screened under the program. It also operates Dallas, Houston, Miami, Boston and Phoenix, according to ICE, and will expand to Los Angeles this year and nearly all local jails by the end of 2012.
Next step: extending the checks to all person arrested, not just those convicted. It is already the case that when a person encounters law enforcement – that is, when police stop a person for legal cause – the police check whether there are arrest warrants pending for that person. We should work toward developing the technologies to ensure that a check for immigration status is part of that process. If the person is found to be present in the United States illegally, they would then be turned over to the immigration authorities for deportation.
In other words: the government need not convict the illegal alien of some other crime first in order to remove him. Removal is not a punishment for crime. Removal is the legal consequence of being present in the United States without legal right – much as ejection is the legal consequence of trespass. A movie theater does not give a trial to people caught in the theater without a ticket. It sends a security officer to walk them off the premises. Immigration violations should be treated in the same way, with of course exceptions available for humanitarian reasons.
1 response so far
1 kroner // May 19, 2009 at 9:18 am
I understand the argument that illegal immigrants should all be rounded up and shipped out, but if that’s going to be the policy than it should be implemented in a consistent manner. There’s no reason that an illegal immigrant wrongly arrested should be deported, but not say one who stops at the post office to buy some stamps, except that one is more convenient. However, there’s not really the means nor the public or political will to enforce the law as it’s currently written and deport them all. If we can agree that like it or not the policy is going to be enforced selectively, than it’s better for there to be a standard (only those convicted of a crime), than no standard. I don’t think the problem is solved by enforcing the law in a still selective, but more arbitrary way. I won’t deny that having laws that aren’t being enforced is a really bad situation to be in, which is why it’s so important that Congress stop delaying addressing immigration reform.
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