Because the word “sequester” sounds more like a bronchial
infection than a governmental disaster, President Obama failed to
terrorize House Republicans into raising taxes in order to avoid
it.
They tried everything they could think of to scare us. We’d have
meat shortages because federal inspectors would be laid off, long
lines at airport security stations would get longer because the TSA
molesters would be cut back. Education Secretary Arne Duncan
earned four “Pinocchios” from the Washington
Post’s Fact Checker column for brazenly lying about
teachers he said were already being laid off in West Virginia.
Duncan, for all his faults, is relatively harmless. The same
cannot be said about Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano,
whose department has begun releasing criminal illegal aliens —
which for this discussion is not redundant — from the jails where
they were being held pending deportation. Even before Friday, when
the $85 billion in cuts took effect, Napolitano’s Immigration and
Customs Enforcement began releasing criminal illegal aliens among
the public.
It’s the Obama administration’s “sequester amnesty,” which
endangers the public to make a political point.
Pinal County, Arizona, is about seventy miles from the Mexican
border. It’s larger than Connecticut, running south and east from
the city of Mesa. Its sheriff, Paul Babeu, is a tough guy in a very
tough place. And both his job and his county are made a lot tougher
by ICE’s release of an unknown number of these criminal illegals,
people who were held pending deportation because their criminal
records made them “inadmissible” into the United States.
Arizona is high on Obama’s list of enemies. It’s the state
Obama’s Justice Department sued to set aside the state law that
enables the arrest and detention of illegal aliens. The Supreme
Court struck down part of the law, but left in place the part that
allows state law enforcement officers to check the immigration
status of people they’ve stopped for other reasons.
Obama’s position is that federal law preempts any state law to
control illegal immigration and any state action for which the
state lacks federal permission is impermissible.
Sheriff Paul Babeu of Pinal County, Arizona, is trying to deal
with that one-way street. I interviewed him on the Roger Hedgecock
radio show last Thursday. What Sheriff Babeu told me is shocking.
It confirms that our government is now willing to endanger public
safety to prove a political point.
In December 2012, Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs
Enforcement agency had more than 33,000 illegal aliens in custody
pending deportation. These aren’t people who were arrested just
because they were illegal aliens. They are criminals, held by ICE
because they were convicted of separate crimes, usually serious
felonies, and held after they’d served their sentences until they
could be deported. Others have long criminal records in their own
countries who came here to do more of what they did at home.
Federal law allows these people to be held for up to six months
pending deportation. Some, from nations such as Pakistan, are held
for that long — and should be held longer - because their country
of origin won’t issue travel documents enabling their return. The
non-cooperating nations are content to leave their problems with
us, be they terrorists or drug traffickers.
The federal government says there are 11 to 12 million illegals
in the United States. Sheriff Babeu told me that 300-500 of the
34,000 criminal illegals held in pre-deportation detention were
released into his county two weekends ago.
Janet Napolitano said that ICE won’t be able to maintain 34,000
criminal illegals in custody — not because of legal limitations on
incarceration, but because of the sequester. In a statement to the
press last week, she said, “Look, we’re doing our very best to
minimize the impacts of sequester. But there’s only so much I can
do,” Napolitano said. “I’m supposed to have 34,000 detention beds
for immigration. How do I pay for those? We want to maintain
22,000-some odd Border Patrol agents. I got to be able to pay their
salaries.”
Babeu told me that neither he nor the county’s police chiefs
were given notice of the release. “The doors swung open and there
they go,” he said.
I asked Babeu if he even knew who these people were. He said
that he’s asked for that information numerous times, including by
letter, and ICE has refused to tell him. “These people were
released into the community. We don’t know their names, we don’t
know what charges they were held on or their criminal history.” He
added, “But we do know this: this is the same group that Janet
Napolitano and Barack Obama have all agreed that these are the
worst of the illegals.”
ICE is saying that some of these illegals were released on terms
that supposedly provide some supervision. Sheriff Babeu is, to say
the least, skeptical.
“They’re saying that they’re going to put them on supervised
release, meaning some of them wear an ankle bracelet or they have
to check in with authorities. Are you kidding me? These people have
broken the law countless times and now they’ve got their chance.
They’re out of prison.”
He added, “There’s no incentive for them to report in because
what’s the worst thing we can do to them? Deport them?”
Sheriff Babeu apparently learned from ICE and Border Patrol
agents who called him unofficially. He said, “Good people who work
for ICE, work for Border Patrol, they call me all the time.…They
said, ‘Sheriff, help us. We’re releasing all these criminals. This
order just came down from Washington and now they’re all out in the
streets.”
Which streets? It’s improbable that Pinal County is the only
place where criminal illegals are being set free. He’s asked about
that, too, and the federal bureaucrats won’t tell him.
So we don’t know how many criminal illegal aliens — criminals
because they’ve committed serious crimes other than illegally
entering the United States — are being set free around the country.
According to an Associated Press
report, Homeland Security has released over 2,000 of these
dangerous illegals since February. Of the 34,000 held by ICE in
December, how many more will be turned loose to endanger the
American people, because the Obama regime wants to punish us for
the sequestration of $85 billion out of the nearly $4 trillion the
government will spend this year?
The release of criminal illegal aliens is probably illegal
itself. Under our muddled immigration law, Napolitano has the
authority to release illegal aliens individually when her
department determines that they pose no danger to public safety.
But mass releases, such as the one into Pinal County, are beyond
her power.
The only answer to this is for Sheriff Babeu — perhaps joined by
other concerned law enforcement officers around the country — to
sue Napolitano to stop the releases. That lawsuit would reveal who
the illegals are, what crimes they’ve committed before, and just
who within ICE, the Justice Department, Homeland Security, or
possibly the White House ordered the releases.
Congress won’t find the answers to these questions no matter how
hard it tries. The House subpoena on “Fast and Furious” was blocked
by Obama’s claim of executive privilege when Congress held Attorney
General Holder in contempt. The Benghazi investigation is still
incomplete, the survivors of the terrorist attack on our diplomatic
outpost held — or, more technically, sequestered — out of
congressional investigators’ reach.
The only answer is “sue the bastards.” Get a federal judge to
issue an injunction against further releases and to compel answers
to Babeu’s questions. He, and the rest of the law enforcement
community, are entitled to know who was released, what crimes they
had committed before, and where these people were when last seen.
They have to know these things if they’re going to do their duty to
protect their communities.
Gene Sperling, Obama’s top economic adviser, was wandering
around the Sunday talk shows blaming Republicans for the sequester.
He said Republicans are to blame for all the harm that results from
the sequester. After Napolitano’s release of criminals from ICE
incarceration, that’s a bolder lie than Arne Duncan’s.
We are living in an era of government lawlessness that is
unprecedented in our history. Obama and his minions will do
whatever they like, whenever they can, to make political points. In
this case, only the courts can stop them.
Photo: UPI
