*
Why is the Obama
administration using its executive powers to implement a general amnesty for
the vast majority of illegal aliens present in the U.S.? And why is it abusing
its law enforcement power to try to prevent states from finding illegal aliens?
*
It’s
time for the Obama administration to stop suing states and start cooperating
with them, encouraging them to help the federal government find, detain and
deport illegal immigrants.
*
Team Obama's Immigration Hypocrisy
By Hans von Spakovsky
Published December 13, 2011 | FoxNews.com
Why is the Obama
administration using its executive powers to implement a general amnesty for
the vast majority of illegal aliens present in the U.S.? And why is it abusing
its law enforcement power to try to prevent states from finding illegal aliens?
The Justice Department has sued
Arizona, Alabama, South Carolina
and Utah over their new laws that require police officers to check the
immigration status of individuals arrested or detained for violations of state
laws if there is a reasonable suspicion the person is unlawfully present in the
United States.
Yet -- hypocrisy alert -- the State Department is doing everything
it can to ensure that local law enforcement authorities determine the
citizenship status of individuals they arrest in order to guarantee that
foreign nationals, including illegal aliens, are notified of their right to
assistance from their country’s consular officials.
Consider the lawsuit the Justice Department filed against South
Carolina on Oct. 31. The complaint says that South Carolina’s requirement that
the immigration status of arrested individuals be verified “will cause the
detention and harassment of authorized visitors, immigrants, and citizens…It
will conflict with longstanding federal law governing the registration and
movement of aliens.”
But the Obama State Department is so concerned about providing
consular access when non-citizens are arrested in the United States that it has
put out a 144-page manual on “Consular Notification and Access.”
It is pretty difficult to provide arrested individuals with
notification of their consular rights unless local police officers determine
that they are, in fact, foreign nationals.
The State Department manual, published by the Bureau of Consular
Affairs, contains detailed instructions for “Federal, State, and Local Law
Enforcement and Other Officials Regarding Foreign Nationals in the United
States and the Rights of Consular Officials to Assist Them.” It even has a
“model standard operating procedure” that it recommends be adopted by local
police agencies as “a template.”
Page five of the manual lays out a flow chart for local police
officers to follow when they arrest an individual. If the individual is not a
U.S. citizen, it tells officers to “inform detainee, without delay, that he or
she may have consulate notified of arrest/detention” (emphasis in original). In
fact, in complete conflict with the Obama Justice Department’s litigation
strategy against state immigration laws, the manual, in the “Frequently Asked
Questions” (FAQ) section, says that “[r]outinely asking every person arrested
or detained whether he or she is a U.S. citizen is highly recommended.”
The entire manual and the model template make it very clear that
the State Department believes that local law enforcement has a duty when it
arrests or detains a foreign national, to “immediately or as soon as reasonably
possible, and in no case longer that the end of the booking shift” to “[n]otify
the nearest consulate of the foreign national’s country.” Pages 108 through 128
of the manual even provide the phone and fax numbers of foreign embassies to
make it easier for local police officers to comply.
In justifying its lawsuits against the states, the Obama
administration has also made public claims that state laws that authorize
citizenship verification of arrestees will lead to racial or language profiling
– that individuals may be treated as non-citizens just because they don’t speak
English well.
However, in the FAQ section of the State Department manual, on
page 13, in answer to the question of how an arresting officer may know “that
someone is a foreign national,” the State Department says “unfamiliarity with
English may also indicate foreign nationality.”
The State Department’s actions are in large part a result of the
Supreme Court’s decision in Medellin v. Texas in 2008, in which it
refused to stop the execution of a Mexican national who gang-raped and murdered
two girls in Texas.
Medellin, who was in the United States illegally, had not been
advised of his consular access rights under the Vienna Convention on Consular
Relations when he was arrested. The Obama administration even went to the
Supreme Court in June of this year to ask it (unsuccessfully) to stop the
execution of another illegal Mexican national, Humberto Leal, who murdered a
16-year old girl in Texas, because he had also not been advised of his right to
diplomatic counsel.
According to the State Department’s own website, the Department
considers it important that state and local law enforcement comply with the
Vienna Convention so that our own citizens will be provided with the same type
of assistance by “U.S. consular officers” when they are abroad.
So while the State Department is doing everything it can to
encourage local law enforcement officials to check the citizenship status of
anyone arrested so that the U.S. can comply with treaty-provided consular
access privileges, the Justice Department is suing to prevent local law
enforcement officials from checking the citizenship status of anyone arrested
even when they have a “reasonable suspicion” that the individual is in the
United States unlawfully.
This despite the fact that the State Department manual says on
page 13 that it “is the arresting officer’s responsibility to inquire about a
person’s nationality if there is any reason to believe that he or she is not a
U.S. citizen.” “Any reason to believe” is a less strict standard than
“reasonable suspicion.”
It’s time for the
Obama administration to stop suing states and start cooperating with them,
encouraging them to help the federal government find, detain and deport illegal
immigrants. If it lacks the courage to do that, and it truly believes, as its
litigation indicates, that authorities should not be checking the citizenship
status of local lawbreakers, than the State Department should withdraw its
“Consular Notification and Access” manual, and stop telling local police
officers to comply with the Vienna Convention by checking the citizenship
status of criminals. And it should quit asking the Supreme Court to prevent the
executions of convicted murderers because local police did not identify them as
foreign nationals.
Hans A. von Spakovsky is a Senior Legal Fellow
at The Heritage Foundation and a former
Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the Justice
Department.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/12/13/team-obamas-immigration-hypocrisy/print#ixzz1giDqXPN8
ARTICLE
8 Out of 10 Illegals Apprehended in 2010 Never Prosecuted
http://www.alipac.us/article-6162-thread-1-0.html
8 Out of 10 Illegals Apprehended in 2010 Never Prosecuted
http://www.alipac.us/article-6162-thread-1-0.html
Eight Out of Ten Illegal Aliens Apprehended in 2010 Never
Prosecuted, Says Border Congressman
Washington (CNSNews.com)
– An illegal alien apprehended by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency
during the last fiscal year had an estimated 84 percent chance of never being
prosecuted, according to figures compiled by the office of Rep. John Culberson
(R-Texas).
Culberson
submitted the figures for the record during a hearing Wednesday of the House
Appropriations subcommittee on homeland security.
Of 447,731
illegal aliens apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol during fiscal year 2010
(which ended last September), only 73,263 (16.4 percent) were prosecuted,
according to the submitted data. That means that 374,468 illegal aliens that
were taken into custody (83.6 percent) were never prosecuted
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