Anti reform climate
Republican leaders in Congress have reacted angrily against the Obama administration because immigration authorities released about 2,000 detainees from prisons and detention centers due to federal budget cuts that recently went into effect. Some of them argue that releasing these immigrants is equivalent to hurting national security, and that it “endangers Americans.”
One congressman even likened this to the Cuban Mariel boatlift, which Fidel Castro used to send prisoners of his regime to the U.S. in 1980.
The comparison is unfortunate precisely because many of those who came over back then were simply political prisoners, people detained for reasons unrelated to public security. Interestingly, that is very similar to what is happening this time: Almost half of the people who get deported each year lack a criminal record and a similar number of those detained by ICE in prisons and detention centers do not have criminal records. Instead, they are fugitives or reoffenders with a prior deportation or a pending deportation order.
Their supervised release with en electronic ankle bracelet, for exampledoes not involve any harm to national security.
However, it is obvious that these Republicans will use false claims, as they have done historically, to create a politically charged climate against comprehensive reform. And speaking of the issue these lawmakers are losing sleep over: Only about 700 people have been deported under charges of posing a threat to U.S. national security in the past 20 years, compared with more than 4 million deported from this country in a similar period.
