Posted on August 19, 2010

La Raza: Deporting 12 Million Illegal Aliens ‘Not a Realistic Solution’ and U.S. Should Stop Trying

Adam Cassandra, Cybercast News Service, August 19, 2010

The United States cannot deport all 12 million illegal aliens in the United States and should stop trying, a spokeswoman for the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) told CNSNews.com last week.

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“Deporting 12 million people is not a realistic solution,” she [NCLR Immigration Field Coordinator A. Elena Lacayo] wrote [in response to a question from CNS]. “It’s time we create a rational immigration system, take these people out of the shadows and restore the rule of law.”

CNSNews.com had asked Lacayo: “Should law enforcement officers strive to prosecute and deport known illegal immigrants whenever they are apprehended or stopped for any reason since they are breaking U.S. law by being inside U.S. borders without legal documentation?”

La Raza released a report last week calling for the termination of a federal program that allows Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to work with local law enforcement to target illegal aliens for deportation.

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The report said that a majority of immigrants detained under 287(g) authority, “have been apprehended for minor offenses such as driving with a broken taillight, fishing without a permit, or ‘conspiracy to smuggle oneself,'” referring to instances when illegal immigrants conspire with human smugglers to enter the United States.

The NCLR also directly attacked Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz. Sheriff Arpaio is internationally known for his strict enforcement of immigration laws in Arizona.

“Perhaps no jurisdiction has shown greater misuse of the 287(g) program than Maricopa County, where Sheriff Joe Arpaio has effectively converted the police department into an immigration enforcement agency,” the report stated.

“More than 2,200 lawsuits have been filed against Sheriff Arpaio’s broad use of the 287(g) program for ‘crime suppression/anti-illegal immigration’ sweeps that have been conducted ‘without any evidence of criminal activity violating federal regulations intended to prevent racial profiling,'” stated the report.

Arpaio did not respond to attempts by CNSNews.com to seek his response to the allegations. {snip}

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According to ICE, since January of 2006, the 287(g) program is credited with identifying more than 173,000 potentially removable aliens, mostly at local jails.

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Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, told CNSNews.com that the criticism of the 287(g) program for apprehending illegal aliens for minor violations has become very common but is “silly.”

“Every person who is an illegal alien here is potentially subject to deportation because they are in violation of immigration law and they don’t have permission to be here,” Vaughan said.

“If the way they get discovered is because they commit another crime, I think most Americans understand the logic there that that’s simply how they came into the attention of law enforcement,” she said.

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“What it boils down to is that this organization, National Council of La Raza, (apparently does not) think any illegal alien should be subject to immigration law enforcement,” Vaughan told CNSNews.com.

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