At least for the duration of the Chinese virus crisis, Immigration and Customs Enforcement will not arrest illegal aliens who are not dangerous criminals, and instead will exercise “discretion” and likely let them run free.
The agency announced the policy change at its website earlier this week, and so as a practical matter illegal aliens can do what they wish without fear of getting the boot.
Those who will get the boot because of the viral pandemic, as The New American reported on Wednesday, are border-jumping “asylum seekers.”
Most of those are hitting the southwest frontier with Mexico, where border agents arrested yet another sex fiend and more than three-dozen illegals packed into a truck like toilet paper racing to a Walmart.
Border agents in Washington state also collared a sex pervert.
Agency Announcement
The statement from ICE says most illegal aliens needn’t worry about deportation during the panic over the Chinese virus.
“ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) will focus enforcement on public safety risks and individuals subject to mandatory detention based on criminal grounds,” the statement explains. “For those individuals who do not fall into those categories, ERO will exercise discretion to delay enforcement actions until after the crisis or utilize alternatives to detention, as appropriate.”
ERO is ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations subsidiary. After it bags an illegal alien, it’s supposed to boot him back home where he belongs:
Homeland Security Investigations will continue to carry out mission critical criminal investigations and enforcement operations as determined necessary to maintain public safety and national security. Examples include investigations into child exploitation, gangs, narcotics trafficking, human trafficking, human smuggling, and continued participation on the Joint Terrorism Task Force. This work will be conducted based on ability to coordinate and work with prosecutors from the Department of Justice and intake at both the U.S. Marshals Service and Bureau of Prisons.
Consistent with its sensitive locations policy, during the COVID-19 crisis, ICE will not carry out enforcement operations at or near health care facilities, such as hospitals, doctors’ offices, accredited health clinics, and emergent or urgent care facilities, except in the most extraordinary of circumstances. Individuals should not avoid seeking medical care because they fear civil immigration enforcement.
The latest from ICE is something of a reprise of the Obama administration’s unconstitutional immigration policies that, as a practical matter, ended immigration enforcement inside the United States until the election of Donald Trump. That move began in 2011 with a memorandum from then-ICE chieftain John Morton, who gave ICE agents “prosecutorial discretion” in deciding whether an illegal alien should be deported.
After that, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano flatly declared the DREAM bill federal law, although Congress never passed it.
At the Border
That policy doesn’t bode well for law-abiding Americans, given that it means illegals must merely slip by border agents to enjoy an indefinite stay in the United States, likely at taxpayer expense.
That aside, sex perverts and other criminals continue crossing the border.
On Tuesday, border agents at Eagle Pass, Texas collared yet another sex pervert, Customs and Border Protection reported. He is a 33-year-old Mexican who was convicted for “indecency with a child sexual conduct” in Austin in 2017. He was deported last year.
The same day, agents at the El Centro Border Sector in California nailed a smuggler who packed 38 border jumpers into a utility trailer. “Agents observed a man driving a Ford F-250 with an enclosed utility trailer in tow,” CBP reported. “The vehicle was traveling away from a location that is known for human and narcotic smuggling”:
Border Patrol agents inspected the vehicle and trailer, which revealed 42 undocumented immigrants, 38 of which were in the trailer. The individuals inside the trailer were without food, water, ventilation or safety restraints. Additionally, the trailer was locked from the outside leaving the individuals with no way of exiting in case of an emergency. The trailer measured 12 feet by 6 feet, forcing the 38 individuals, two being juveniles, to cram together with no room for movement.
In something of twist, agents at the border station at Oroville, Washington, bagged an illegal-alien sex fiend on Monday. He had failed to register as a sex offender as required due to his 1990 Class B felony conviction for child molestation in the first degree, CBP reported.
On Tuesday, the New York Times disclosed that the Trump administration will no longer accept applications for asylum from illegals caught at the border because of the Chinese virus contagion. They will be immediately deported.
Image: FOTOKITA via iStock / Getty Images Plus
R. Cort Kirkwood is a long-time contributor to The New American and a former newspaper editor.
