Releaser-in-Chief

ICE engages in catch & release instead of interior enforcement; 68,000 convicted criminal aliens released in one year

Public safety is threatened by the Obama administration's deliberate suppression of immigration law enforcement through abuse of prosecutorial discretion. A study released by the Center for Immigration Studies - based on internal data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement - reveals that this practice has led to ICE charging only 195,000, or 25 percent, out of 722,000 potentially deportable aliens they encounter and releasing convicted criminal aliens 68,000 times in 2013. The releases are troubling, as is the revelation that more than 870,000 aliens who have been ordered removed still remain in the country in defiance of the law.

Just as the president has ordered a review of U.S. deportation practices with the intent of lowering the number of deportations, this study highlights the public safety issues that have resulted from the dramatic downturn in interior enforcement on his watch. ICE targeted 28 percent fewer aliens for deportation from the interior in 2013 than in 2012, despite sustained high numbers of encounters in the Criminal Alien and Secure Communities programs.

"The Obama administration's deliberate obstruction of immigration enforcement, in which tens of thousands of criminal aliens are released instead of removed, is threatening the well-being of American communities," said study author Jessica Vaughan. "It's not a matter of if, but how many families will suffer harm as a result. Every day, I read accounts of crimes that could have been prevented if ICE officers had been allowed to do their jobs. DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson should be reaching out to these victims and their families to better understand the impact of his actions. And, Congress should initiate a review of the public safety implications of the administration's abuse of prosecutorial discretion."

View the entire report at: http://www.cis.org/catch-and-release

Key findings include:

In 2013, ICE charged only 195,000, or 25 percent, out of 722,000 potentially deportable aliens they en-countered. Most of these aliens came to ICE's attention after incarceration for a local arrest.

ICE released 68,000 criminal aliens in 2013, or 35 percent of the criminal aliens encountered by officers. The vast majority of these releases occurred because of the Obama administration's prosecutorial discretion policies, not because the aliens were not deportable.

ICE targeted 28 percent fewer aliens for deportation from the interior in 2013 than in 2012, despite sus-tained high numbers of encounters in the Criminal Alien and Secure Communities programs.

Every ICE field office but one reported a decline in interior enforcement activity.

ICE reports that there are more than 870,000 aliens on its docket who have been ordered removed, but who remain in defiance of the law.

Under current policies, an alien's family relationships, political considerations, attention from advocacy groups, and other factors not related to public safety can trump even serious criminal convictions and result in the termination of a deportation case.

Less than 2 percent of ICE's caseload was in detention at the end of fiscal year 2013. About three-fourths of the aliens ICE detained in 2013 had criminal and/or immigration convictions so serious that the detention was required by statute.

Email from CIS

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Obama is anti-American -- always has been

Thomas Sowell

Japan recently turned over to the United States enough weapons-grade nuclear material to make dozens of nuclear bombs. This was one of President Barack Obama's few foreign policy "successes," as part of his nuclear disarmament initiative. But his foreign policy successes may be more dangerous than his "failures." Back in 2005, Senator Barack Obama urged the Ukrainians to drastically reduce their conventional weapons, including anti-aircraft missiles and tons of ammunition. Ukraine had already rid itself of nuclear missiles, left over from the days when it had been part of the Soviet Union.

Would Vladimir Putin have sent Russian troops so boldly into Ukraine if the Ukrainians still had nuclear missiles? The nuclear disarming of Japan and Ukraine shows how easy it is to disarm peaceful nations -- making them more vulnerable to those who are not peaceful.

Ukraine's recent appeal to the United States for military supplies, with which to defend itself as more Russian troops mass on its borders, was denied by President Obama. He is sending food supplies instead. He might as well send them white flags, to facilitate surrender.

Critics who say that President Obama is naive and inexperienced in foreign policy, and blame that for the many setbacks to American interests during this administration may be right. But it is by no means certain that they are.

Another and more disturbing possibility is that Barack Obama, in his citizen-of-the-world conception of himself, thinks that the United States already has too much power and needs to be deflated. Rush Limbaugh, Dinesh D'Souza and some other critics have seen Obama's repeated sacrifices of American national interests as deliberate.

Monstrous as that possibility might seem, it is consistent not only with many otherwise hard to explain foreign policy setbacks, but also consistent with Obama's having been raised, literally from childhood, with anti-American mentors, beginning with his mother. He continued to seek out such people as an adult.

The ranting Reverend Jeremiah Wright was just one of these anti-American mentors.

President Obama's undermining of stable and unthreatening governments in Egypt and Libya, opening both to Islamic extremists, while doing nothing that was likely to keep Iran from going nuclear, seems more consistent with the views of Rush Limbaugh, Dinesh D'Souza, et al., than with the views of most other critics.

What is also more consistent with the Limbaugh and D'Souza thesis are such personal quirks as Obama's gross rudeness to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the White House and his otherwise inexplicable public debasement of himself and the United States by bowing low to other foreign leaders.

There was nothing to be gained politically by such actions. Nor by such things as his whispered statement to Russian president Dmitry Medvedev that he should tell "Vladimir" that he -- Obama -- could follow a more "flexible" foreign policy after his last election was behind him.

What could be more "flexible" than denying Ukraine the military supplies needed to deter further Russian aggression? Or leaving Japan without material needed to create a nuclear deterrent quickly, while an aggressive China is expanding its military forces and its territorial demands in the region?

Domestically, the unbroken string of Barack Obama's grievance-mongering mentors included Professor Derrick Bell at the Harvard Law School, author of rantings on paper similar to Jeremiah Wright's rantings in his church.

Professor Bell was a man cast in the role of a scholar at top tier universities, who chose instead to take on the pathetic role of someone whose goal was -- in his own words -- to "annoy white people."

Derrick Bell was not a stupid man. He was a man placed where he should never have been placed, where there was no self-respecting role for him to play, without going off on some strange tangent. That Barack Obama literally embraced Professor Bell publicly in law school, and urged others to listen to him, says much about Obama.

It says much about those who voted for Obama that they paid so little attention to his life and so much attention to his rhetoric.

SOURCE

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Official Policy: Male Federal Workers Can Use Women's Restrooms, Locker Rooms

When an expectant mother visits her doctor for an ultrasound, the doctor invariably asks: Do you want to know the sex of your child?

The Obama administration, however, does not believe an unborn child has a sex -- even when a doctor sees indisputable physical evidence.

Obama's Office of Personnel Management has published what it calls "Guidance Regarding the Employment of Transgender Individuals in the Workplace." This document speaks of "sex" as something a person has "assigned" to them only after they make it through the birth canal.

"Transgender individuals are people with a gender identity that is different from the sex assigned to them at birth," says the guidance. "Someone who was assigned the male sex at birth but who identifies as female is a transgender woman. Likewise, a person assigned the female sex at birth but who identifies as male is a transgender man."

OPM discretely expresses its theory in the passive voice. It does not blame the mom or the dad for insensitively exclaiming, without any qualification: It's a boy!

But OPM's guidance does allow qualifications for federal workers. "Some individuals will find it necessary to transition from living and working as one gender to another," says OPM.

The guidelines say the last phase in this transition is called "real life experience." "As the name suggests, the real life experience is designed to allow the transgender individual to experience living full-time in the gender role to which he or she is transitioning," say the guidelines. "Completion of at least one year of the real life experience is required prior to an individual's being deemed eligible for gender reassignment surgery."

The guidelines call for the government to take certain steps to accommodate a federal worker going through a transition.

This can involve educating co-workers. "If it would be helpful and appropriate, employing agencies may have a trainer or presenter meet with employees to answer general questions regarding gender identity," say the guidelines.

It means allowing the person to dress differently. "Once an employee has informed management that he or she is transitioning," say the guidelines, "the employee will begin wearing the clothes associated with the gender to which the person is transitioning."

It means having co-workers use gender-correct terminology. "Managers, supervisors, and co-workers should use the name and pronouns appropriate to the employee's new gender," say the guidelines.

Then there is the point in the guidance governing restrooms and locker rooms.

"For a transitioning employee, this means that, once he or she has begun living and working full-time in the gender that reflects his or her identity, agencies should allow access to restrooms and (if provided to other employees) locker room facilities consistent with his or her gender identity," say the guidelines.

According to the guidance, access to a restroom or locker room should not be conditioned on anatomy.

"While a reasonable temporary compromise may be appropriate in some circumstances," say the guidance, "transitioning employees should not be required to have undergone or to provide proof of any particular medical procedure (including gender reassignment surgery) in order to have access to facilities designated for use by a particular gender."

On Sept. 4, OPM published a proposed regulation based on the same prefatory language as its guidance -- i.e. to provide a federal workplace free from discrimination based on "sex (including gender identity and pregnancy)."

This regulation would extend federal civil rights laws, insofar as they protect federal workers, to cover discrimination based on "gender identity" and "sexual orientation."

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has submitted well-reasoned comments on the proposed rule. After noting there is no statutory basis for it, and that some politicians are trying to enact the Employment Non-Discrimination Act to create a statutory basis for it, the USCCB's comments deal with the issues of privacy and freedom of speech.

"Employees have, for example, a legitimate expectation of privacy in workplace restrooms and locker rooms," says the USCCB. "Inclusion of gender identity in the OPM regulations would violate those reasonable expectations. In addition, a government prohibition on all differential treatment based on gender identity would almost certainly be used to squelch speech in the workplace that is not morally approving of efforts to 'identify with' the opposite sex or of the purported 'change' of one's given sex."

But it is in a footnote, quoting the Catholic Catechism, that the bishops get to the heart of the matter: "'Being man' or 'being woman' is a reality which is good and willed by God."

"Everyone, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity," says the USCCB's comment, continuing to quote the Catechism. "Physical, moral, and spiritual difference and complementarity are oriented toward the goods of marriage and the flourishing of family life. The harmony of the couple and of society depends in part on the way in which the complementarity, needs, and mutual support between the sexes are lived out."

The people who now run our federal government not only deny the basic facts of life, they are trying to force the consequences of their denial on the world that all the innocent little boys and girls born today must inhabit tomorrow.

SOURCE

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