Posted on February 22, 2016

Almost 90,000 Dangerous Illegal Immigrants Go Free

Paul Bedard, Washington Examiner, February 22, 2016

Nearly 60 percent of illegal immigrants identified by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as criminal threats are not deported and are eventually released, the latest example of the Obama administration’s failed immigration policy.

Internal ICE figures show that in fiscal 2015, the agency encountered 152,393 illegal immigrants labeled a criminal threat, mostly in jails, but charged 64,116. About another 88,000 were not processed for deportation, according to the Center for Immigration Studies’ Jessica Vaughan.

The numbers are even worse for those who ICE asks local police and sheriffs to detain but never collect.

Under Obama’s recently announced Priority Enforcement Program, officials work with local police to arrest and deport criminal immigrants. In reality, that amounts to a phone call from ICE requesting local authorities hold the suspect for 48 hours after they’re set to be freed.

But several sheriffs from around the country say that just 35-40 percent of those held are ever seized by ICE, even after they’ve been released.

Richard W. Stanek, sheriff of Hennepin County in Minneapolis, said he had 75 illegals ICE wanted, but the agency only picked up about 35 percent. “And these are people that they want,” he told the Washington Examiner.

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