Apparently some illegal alien criminals showed up for their work-release program, after being sentenced for committing misdemeanors in California, and found the federales waiting for them:

The 32 men arrested Saturday morning at the Glen Helen Rehabilitation Center were participating in a county work release program as an alternative to serving time in jail.

The illegal immigrants were previously convicted of misdemeanor offenses in the United States, including driving under the influence, driving without a license, reckless driving and possession of drugs for sale, federal officials said.

Their arrests come as a result of a sweeping program in which local and federal authorities work together to find, apprehend and deport illegal immigrant criminals.

As in the case below, we know this is working because it’s getting a squawk out of the “Immigrant-rights advocates” criminal illegal alien advocates, who claim these folks weren’t violent.

It’s the way these things go–when an effective policy crops up the open borders lobby huffs and snorts. After the Agriprocessors raid in Iowa, the WSJ asked rhetorically whether we felt any safer.

They won’t dare ask that in: with illegal drunk drivers and drug dealers shipped out the door, of course we’re safer. Here’s ICE spokesman Virginia Kice, who sounds like she gets it:

“Someone may say that misdemeanor violations should not be a priority, but there is a very real possibility they could go out and commit a more serious offense that has heartbreaking consequences for the community,” Kice said. “What if a person who has a DUI conviction gets behind the wheel several months from now and has an accident that claims the life of several innocent victims? Why would we allow that to happen?”

Why, indeed? Cheap lettuce? The criminal illegal alien advocacy lobby is going to need to come up with a better rejoinder than that. These are not sympathetic characters they’re defending. It’s one thing to post a tearjerking photo-op of a deportee who had been working quietly and staying out of trouble, but when illegal alien advocates defend drunk drivers and dope dealers their support may start to erode.

After all, that might have been the next Edwin Ramos they just deported.

______________

{Post by See-Dubya}

Okay, but I’ll keep my eyes open; there’s a strong tendency to downplay controversial incidents like this one. (Remember how long it took the Feds to admit that Hesham Hedayet, who shot up the El Al counter at LAX, was a terrorist?)

Whatever the story is, I’d like to get to the bottom of it, because something like it happened again Thursday. Four to ten guys in police uniforms and tactical gear busted into another house in Phoenix. And their choice of targets is interesting:

The residence might have been a drop house used for smuggling illegal immigrants, and it was furnished in such a way that made it difficult to escape from, Tranter said.

The men held two other men inside the house captive for several minutes, stealing money and personal belongings from the home, Tranter said. Police believe the two men held captive inside could have been involved with smuggling illegal immigrants. The men, ages 62 and 34, were not seriously injured, but one was pistol-whipped, he said. Both are suspected of being Mexican nationals here illegally.

More here, with video.

So to review: killers dressed as cops, hitting criminal targets, and ready to take down a few cops who get in their way.

I think I’ve seen that movie:

Not certain whether these crimes are related, but I’d sure like to find out more about what’s going on in Phoenix.

Besides the obvious, I mean.

________________________

{Post by See-Dubya}

More about Sara Cole and why the law was named after her here:

Bill Cole, Sara’s ex-husband, is trying to do more. Cole is seeking support for Assembly Bill 1882 – “Sara’s Law” – which would require police to report illegal immigrants to immigration if they are convicted of driving under the influence. Rodriguez was convicted of a misdemeanor DUI in March of 2007, a year and a half before his drunken driving resulted in the injuries suffered by Sara Cole.

The Sara’s Law site is here. I hope the Assembly will reconsider its decision. It’s indefensible.

MORE: Patterico blogged the crash that injured Sara Cole here. It looks like her ex-husband may have chimed in in the comments. (h/t to Annursa for that.)

Are the Feds catching a clue?

The recently announced ICE effort, known as “Secure Communities,” will upgrade computer technology in jails and allow local jailers to access ICE’s fingerprint database to quickly identify prisoners with immigration violations as they are booked. The $200 million in funding already allocated for the program this year would also add an unspecified number of ICE detention and removal officers, Counts confirmed.

The program would also:

• Prioritize removal of criminal immigrants based on their danger to the community.

• Expand an early parole program for non-violent immigrants who agree to deportation.

Sounds good to me. There’s some discussion of the cost of the initiative (a billion) and also a secure-borders guy claiming that hardened criminals should serve out their sentences before they’re deported. There’s a point there, because without a secure border, they can come right back over and will have effectively enjoyed a “criminal illegal alien early-release program”. I hope the “prioritizing” of these deportations focuses on, for example, murderers who are arrested for a misdemeanor and would be back on the street in a matter of days if they’re not deported immediately. As for convicted felons already serving time in prison, well, the damage is done. Make a note, let them serve out most of their sentence and then have a plane waiting to take them home the day of their release.

Unless the state decides differently. States may be tired of paying for the incarceration of illegal immigrant criminals and want to send them on home. If states want to do that, it’s their business.

I look at the cost issue this way: illegal alien criminals are in state jails because the Federal government failed in its obligation to secure and defend the border. Especially these repeat offenders who should have been thrown out and kept out. The burden should be on the Feds to pay the bill if someone gets back through and commits a crime, and the state has to arrest them.

(Hat tip to DRJ for that one.)

Now, Latinos are clamoring to get their naturalization applications approved in time to vote for the November elections. They’ve taken the Bush administration to court.

What’s that sound I hear? Yes, the sound of more background checks being tossed over the bridge:

A lawsuit filed Thursday in a federal court in New York by Latino immigrants seeks to force immigration authorities to complete hundreds of thousands of stalled naturalization petitions in time for the new citizens to vote in November.

The class-action suit was brought by the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund on behalf of legal Hispanic immigrants in the New York City area who are eager to vote and have been waiting for years for the federal Citizenship and Immigration Services agency to finish their applications. The suit demands that the agency meet a nationwide deadline of Sept. 22 to complete any naturalization petitions filed by March 26.

Latino groups hope to summon the clout of the federal courts to compel the Bush administration to reduce a backlog of citizenship applications that swelled last year. According to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research group in Washington, more than one million citizenship petitions were backed up in the pipeline by the end of December, the majority from Latino immigrants.

Despite protests over the delays from lawmakers, Latino groups and immigrant advocates, the immigration agency is currently projecting wait times of 16 months to 18 months to process the petitions.

“The reality is that large numbers of Latinos will not be able to vote in the elections because of these delays,” said Cesar A. Perales, president of the defense fund. “Now the world will know that the Latino community expects the Bush administration to get this done on time.”

Christopher S. Bentley, a spokesman for Citizenship and Immigration Services, said he could not comment on pending litigation.

“Our commitment is to work through the naturalization applications as quickly as we can without compromising the security and integrity of the process,” Mr. Bentley said.

Without compromising the security and integrity of the process.

Waaay too late for that.

***

Flashback: Read my “Clear the damn backlogs, first” memo to Washington from last June.

During the shamnesty debacle, we were told to shut up about our national security concerns because McCain and company were going to guarantee that all illegal alien guest-workers would get thorough background checks. We were told to calm down about the proposal because there was nothing to worry about. But the background check process was a fraud.

And anyone with more than a passing knowledge of the adjudication process at DHS and the former INS agency has long known that security is routinely short-circuited. In 2006, I published memos exposing the incentive structure rewarding adjudication officers for rubber-stamping as many applications as possible. Immigration agents across the country receive bonuses when they meet quotas for approving applications. Those national security-undermining incentives and bonuses remain in place. Flashback (click for full-size memos):

Here’s a memo from the Houston USCIS office from May 2004. According to sources, adjudicators are still being rewarded for high “average completions per day.”

In fact, bureaucrats have cooked up elaborate evaluation charts and ratings based on completion of different types of applications.

The single number in the boxes that begins with an “I” is a type of application. The column of numbers shows how many of each application an adjudicator must process per hour to receive a rating of outstanding (O), excellent (E), and so on. Promotions, raises, and bonuses are based on these ratings at the National Benefits Center in Lee’s Summit, MO.

Now, ask your representatives in Washington how the hell they think the millions of applications for the Senate’s amnesty and guest-worker programs will be subject to more rigorous and careful scrutiny–when entrenched rubber-stamping of current and backlogged applications gets rewarded and always has been.

In 2003, an INS center in Laguna Niguel solved the massive backlog problem by putting tens of thousands of applications through a shredder.

And I reminded you last week of how the Clintons sped up the naturalization process to create millions of new Democrat voters by…circumventing background checks.

And so we come to James Asher’s new report. Everything old is new again:

In a major policy shift aimed at reducing a ballooning immigration backlog, the Department of Homeland Security is preparing to grant permanent residency to tens of thousands of applicants before the FBI completes a required background check.

Those eligible are immigrants whose fingerprints have cleared the FBI database of criminal convictions and arrests, but whose names have not yet cleared the FBI’s criminal or intelligence files after six months of waiting.

The immigrants who are granted permanent status, more commonly known as getting their green cards, will be expected eventually to clear the FBI’s name check. If they don’t, their legal status will be revoked and they’ll be deported.

Oh, no they won’t. Again: Learn from history.

DHS tries to maintain self-delusion:

DHS officials said the new process does not pose any new security risks because green card applicants have been allowed to remain in the country while they wait to be screened.

“We will do nothing that cuts corners or compromises national security,” said Chris Bentley, a spokesman for Citizenship and Immigration Services, the DHS agency that processes green cards and citizenship.

Mark Krikorian provides the reality check:

“It’s a decision driven by the bureaucratic imperative to move the line along rather than addressing national security concerns,” said Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies. “It defies the imagination that you can require a security check only to decide that you’re going to ignore it.”

Same old, same old.

Despite his loud crusading for illegal alien driver’s licenses, Sen. Barack Obama lost out to Hillary Clinton on the Latino vote tonight. Hispanic Clintonistas attribute her commanding lead on “name support.” I have a different theory. More on that in a moment. First, this:

“There is a real affection for the Clinton administration and a real familiarity with Senator Clinton,” said Cecilia Munoz, senior vice president for policy at the National Council of La Raza. In addition, she said, Clinton “got support of the big figures in the Latino political establishment quite early. So she has really terrific surrogates and they have been on board with her for a long time.”

The legacy of Bill Clinton’s administration was evident in yesterday’s exit polls from California, where Clinton beat Obama among Hispanics by 2 to 1. “There is a lot of name support,” Vargas said.

So, where did all of Hillary’s Latino votes come from? Well, there’s another legacy of Bill Clinton’s administration that should not be forgotten: The corrupted, reckless Citizenship USA program. Rosemary Jenks of Numbers USA first blew the whistle on the subversion of the naturalization process, pushed by then-VP Al Gore in 1996:

The preliminary results of the INS internal review of naturalization applications approved during CUSA, as presented to the Subcommittee by Assistant Attorney General for Administration Stephen Colgate clearly show that the problems were severe. Of the 1,049,872 immigrants granted U.S. citizenship under CUSA:

* 71, 557 were found to have FBI criminal records, including INS administrative actions (e.g., deportation proceedings or other immigration violations), and misdemeanor and felony arrests and convictions;
* Of these 71,557, 10,800 had at least one felony arrest, 25,500 had at least one misdemeanor arrest, but no felonies, and 34,700 had only administrative actions initiated against them;
* 113,126 had only name checks because their fingerprint cards were returned to the INS by the FBI because they were illegible;
* 66,398 did not have FBI criminal record checks because their fingerprint cards were never submitted to the FBI by the INS; and
* 2,573 were still being processed by the FBI.

As of late February 1997, 168 of these new citizens had been found to be “presumptively, statutorily ineligible” for naturalization based on their criminal record, and in another 2,800 cases, it could not be determined based on available information whether they were eligible or not.

Former House Judiciary Cmte chief counsel David Schippers followed up on the investigation and published his findings in his book, Sellout. A relevant excerpt:

My staff and I agreed that we needed to focus on the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), which appeared to be running out of control. By the time we came to the subject, investigations by the General Accounting Office (GAO) and congressional committees had already indicated that the White House used the INS to further its political agenda. A blatant politicization of the agency took place during the 1996 presidential campaign when the White House pressured the INS into expediting its “Citizenship USA” (CUSA) program to grant citizenship to thousands of aliens that the White House counted as likely Democratic voters. To ensure maximum impact, the INS concentrated on aliens in key states — California, Florida, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, and Texas — that hold a combined 181 electoral votes, just 89 short of the total needed to win the election.

The program was placed under the direction of Vice President Al Gore. We received from the GAO a few e-mails indicating Vice President Gore’s role in the plan (which are included in Appendix A at the back of the book). He was responsible for keeping the pressure on, to make sure the aliens were pushed through by September 1, the last day to register for the presidential election.

In our investigation we uncovered a case study evidencing what is pejoratively known in political science circles as “Chicago Politics.”

Back in the early years of the twentieth century, “Hinky Dink” Kenna and “Bathouse” John Coughlin were recognized as the very models of the unsavory Chicago politician. The two once fixed an aldermanic election in Chicago’s First Ward. To do so, they imported thousands of ward heelers, friends, associates, and city workers and had them registered to vote from every building in the ward — from homes (of which there were few) to taverns and cribs (of which there were many). On Election Day the recent arrivals stopped at Hinky Dink’s tavern, picked up fifty cents, ate a free lunch, and went out to vote their consciences. Guess who won that election?

Essentially, the same tactics were used during President Clinton’s reelection in 1996. Only this time the Democrats weren’t handing out sandwiches. Instead, through CUSA, they were circumventing normal procedures for naturalizing aliens — procedures that check backgrounds and weed out criminals — and consequently they were handing out citizenship papers to questionable characters.

The possibility of using CUSA apparently occurred to the White House in February 1996, when Henry Cisneros, then Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, forwarded a memo to President Clinton. The memo, from the California Active Citizenship Campaign (ACC), complained of a backlog of alien applications for naturalization in Los Angeles. It contained the magic words: “INS inaction [on the backlog] will deny 300,000 Latinos the right to vote in the 1996 presidential elections [sic] in California.”

The memo outlined the services that the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) in Los Angeles could provide. The IAF offered thousands of volunteers to help process voter applications, register thousands of new voters, conduct 5,000 house meetings, encourage voting by mail, and get more than 50,000 occasional voters out to vote in the presidential election. Most interesting were the promises that the IAF would “create voter interest around issues of Affirmative Action and Minimum Wage, . . . influence 300,000 voters in the preparation for Nov. 1996, . . . produce 5,000 precinct leaders and turn out 96,000 voters for the 1996 presidential election.”

The White House discovered a problem, however: INS Commissioner Doris Meissner didn’t want to speed up the naturalization process and warned President Clinton’s people that such a push might be viewed as politically motivated…

Eventually, she gave in:

The White House wanted any applicant for citizenship to be naturalized in time to register for the November election, so the pressure on the INS was constant. On March 21 Elaine Kamarck in the Vice President’s office sent an e-mail to [National Performance Review official Douglas] Farbrother saying: “THE PRESIDENT IS SICK OF THIS AND WANTS ACTION. IF NOTHING MOVES TODAY WE’LL HAVE TO TAKE SOME PRETTY DRASTIC MEASURES.” Farbrother responded, “I favor drastic measures.” If he couldn’t get what he wanted from the INS, he wrote, he would “call for heavy artillery.”

In a March 26 e-mail to the Vice President, Farbrother reported that Chris Sale has indeed “delegated hiring authority to the five cities and increased their budgets by 20 percent.” But, he wrote, “I still don’t think the city directors have enough freedom to do the job.” Two days later Farbrother told the Vice President by e-mail, “[U]nless we blast INS headquarters loose from their grip on the frontline managers, we are going to have way too many people still waiting for citizenship in November.” He added, “I can’t make Doris Meissner delegate broad authority to her field managers. Can you?”

Gore answered, “We’ll explore it. Thanks.” By the end of March, Doris Meissner capitulated. On April 4, 1996, Elaine Kamarck, to prepare the Vice President for a lunch with Clinton, drafted a memo to Gore briefing him on the INS progress. In time, Newark, New Jersey, and Houston, Texas, would be added to the list of targeted cities, and in all, more than a million aliens would be naturalized in time to vote in the 1996 election.

The “path to citizenship” leads to Democrat votes. Too bad shamnesty Republicans refuse to learn from history.

Over the last several years, I’ve noted the following immigration backlogs that continue to plague our homeland security system:

*The backlog of 600,000-plus fugitive deportee cases.

*The backlog of 4 million immigration applications of all kinds.

*The backlog of an estimated 100,000 FBI background checks for legal immigrant applicants.

*The disappearance of 111,000 citizenship applications.

The Washington Post reports today that those mounds of unprocessed paperwork continue to grow. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants who came here legally are waiting for FBI background checks that must be obtained before they can become naturalized:

Since 2005, the backlog of legal U.S. immigrants whose applications for naturalization and other benefits are stuck on hold awaiting FBI name checks has doubled to 329,160…

That’s right. The FBI name check backlog stands at nearly 330,000 cases.

After an embarrassing citizenship screw-up that I reported on in November 2002 involving a known Hezbollah terrorist who received naturalization approval, immigration officials resubmitted 2.7 million names of applicants to the FBI for additional scrutiny. The Post reports that “[m]ore than five years later, the FBI is only now emerging from that huge load, with about 5,800 names left to be rechecked.”

But the pile-up persists:

About 90 percent of name checks, officials say, emerge with no matches within three months, after an automated search of databases. But the remaining 10 percent can take months or years, as 30 analysts and assistants must coordinate with 56 field offices and retrieve files stored in 265 locations nationwide.

As a result, the FBI has fallen further behind on the 1.5 million new names it receives each year from USCIS. Of about 329,000 cases pending as of May, 64 percent were stalled for more than 90 days, 32 percent for more than one year and 17 percent for more than two years.

“No one is happy with the status quo,” said USCIS Deputy Director Jonathan “Jock” Scharfen. “We share the public’s unhappiness with this, and we’re committed to improving the process.”

How about we fix that process before adding millions more “guest worker” applications to the bureaucratic mess?

How about we make legal immigrant applicants the priority over illegal aliens for once?

How about we clear the obstructions to the “path to citizenship” for those who followed the rules and came here the right way before we start paving the “path to citizenship” for those who did it the wrong way?

When the shamnesty proponents start blubbering about compassion and fairness, ask them where their compassion is for the hundreds of thousands of legal immigrant applicants who are getting screwed–and who have paid far more in legal fees and processing fees than the measly, cosmetic “fine” the shamnesty plan proposes for illegal aliens.

As I wrote back in January, when I warned of the Coming Amnesty Disaster while too many people were still snoozing:

We are incapable of imposing order and handling the current crush of legal immigrant applicants in a fair and timely way. You want “comprehensive immigration reform”? Start with border control, reliable adjudications, consistent interior enforcement, and efficient and effective deportation policies. And don’t pretend that piling on is going to fix a darned thing.

Memo to the White House: Clear the damn backlogs first.

Memo to Congress: Clear the damn backlogs first.

Memo to the GOP Senate wafflers: Clear the damn backlogs first.

Need it on a bumper sticker? Here:

Today in my syndicated newspaper column, I report on another aspect of the deportation abyss–the endless appeals process and immigration litigation lottery played by deportable aliens and their open-borders lawyers.

As you follow the debate over the Bush-Kennedy immigration bill, keep this cardinal rule in mind: 99.99 percent of the lawmakers who promise you that they’ll ensure the deportation of anyone who doesn’t follow their new “guest-worker” regulations are either A) lying or B) completely clueless.

Rule No. 2: Anyone who plays the Enforcement equals Kicking-Down-Doors-And-Depriving-Babies-of-Mother’s-Milk card (yes, that’s you, Geraldo Rivera) is either A) lying or B) completely clueless.

As I’ve reported many times over the last several years, the nation’s deportation abyss is governed by one reality: “It ain’t over ’til the alien wins.” Immigration lawyers and ethnic activists run a massive, lucrative industry whose sole objective is to help illegal aliens and convicted criminal visa holders evade deportation for as long as possible. Entry into this country should be a privilege, not a right. The open borders lobby has turned that principle on its head.

Look no further than New York, where four convicted criminal aliens — a child molester, two killers and a racketeer — just won a federal lawsuit to remain in the country after all being ordered deported. The stunning decision from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, Blake v. Carbone, came down on June 1 as the shamnesty debate was bubbling in Washington. The ruling, which hinges on convoluted due process arguments, will greatly expand the number of criminal aliens convicted of certain aggravated felonies who can now receive relief from deportation. This is happening despite the passage of two federal immigration reform laws in 1996 severely restricting deportation waivers for criminal aliens convicted of aggravated felonies.

The lead winning plaintiff, Leroy Blake, is a Jamaican national convicted of first-degree sexual abuse of a minor in 1992. The feds began deportation proceedings in 1999. An immigration judge ruled Blake deportable in 2000. Blake took his case to the federal Board of Immigration Appeals, which remanded the case back to the immigration judge, who granted him relief from deportation. The then-INS appealed the judge’s ruling. In 2005, the Board of Immigration Appeals sided with the INS and ordered Blake removed from the U.S. Blake filed a motion to reconsider, then took his case to the Second Circuit.

The other plaintiffs who’ve successfully gamed the system include:

Aundre Singh, a native of Guyana, who was convicted of second-degree murder in 1986. In 1997, the then-INS moved to deport him. In 1998, an immigration judge ordered him deported. In 1999, the Board of Immigration Appeals dismissed Singh’s appeal. In 2003, Singh filed a motion to reconsider, which the appeals board denied. Singh filed for reconsideration of that ruling, which was denied in 2004. Singh tried again to appeal the board’s ruling in 2005 and was denied again before heading to the Second Circuit for relief.

Errol Foster, a Jamaican national, who killed a man with a pistol in 1990. He pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter. He was released from prison in 2002. The feds began deportation proceedings while he was still in custody. An immigration judge ordered his removal in 2000, which Foster appealed. The Board of Immigration Appeals rejected his appeal in 2001. Four years later, Foster was still in the country — appealing the rejected appeal and filing three separate federal lawsuits before getting lucky with the Second Circuit.

And Ho Yoon Chong, a South Korean national, who was sentenced in 1995 for racketeering related to his participation in the “Korean Fuk Ching” crime ring. In 1998, the then-INS moved to deport him. In 2002, an immigration judge ordered him deported. In 2004, the Board of Immigration Appeals sided with the judge. Like his fellow criminal aliens, Chong didn’t give up, and now he’s won the immigration litigation lottery.

Immigration lawyers representing criminal aliens like these four menaces have gummed up the court system with 11 years of litigation over the 1996 laws banning deportation relief for felons. Eleven years.

Open-borders Democrats led by Ted Kennedy bleat about the lack of “due process” for downtrodden aliens, but immigration lawyers and their clients know the deal. Whether the Bush-Kennedy bill passes or not, it ain’t over ’til the alien wins.

This is the real “silent amnesty” that no one in Washington will talk about. Go ahead. Ask them.

***

***Update:*** Reader e-mail from Brian S…

Your article at NRO today is right on point. I was a law clerk with the Fifth Circuit a few years ago, and it was amazing the number of petitions for review of BIA decisions we handled. You are absolutely correct that immigration lawyers use the current system of endless appeals to make illegals essentially undeportable. (It amazes me that illegal aliens, unlike American citizens, get TWO appeals as of right — one to the BIA and then another to the Circuit Court of Appeals.) The Real ID Act of 2005 limited somewhat the avenues of review an illegal could pursue in the Circuit Courts, but it did not go far enough. After working in the system, the solution to this problem is simple in theory: repeal the statutory provisions that provide for judicial review by the Courts of Appeals and the Supreme Court. It is clearly permissible for the Congress to do this under the Constitution. See U.S. Const. Art. III, Section 3, Clause 2 (“the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.) This would eliminate the biggest “bottleneck” in the removal/deportation process. It would also reduce greatly the overburden dockets of our federal appellate courts.

***

John Boehner called the Bush-Kennedy immigration bill a “piece of s**t” last night. Yeah, after sifting through it the past couple of days, I need a shower.

Debate resumed in the Senate this morning. Yesterday, an amendment sponsored by Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) that would have deleted the bill’s guestworker provisions was voted down.

Update: Sen. DeMint calls out the Dems’ move to limit amendments from critics of the bill.

While they debate, here are 7 things buried inside the Bush-Kennedy amnesty goodie bag you should know about–plus more questions raised about the phony triggers and point system (all links referring to the bill provisions take you directly to the section in the 317-page draft bill released Friday night and published in online/linkable form by N.Z. Bear):

1) It includes Ted Kennedy’s DREAM Act (Title VI, Section 611, Subtitle B)–a key goodie demanded by illegal alien lobbyists. The DREAM Act gives illegal alien students in-state college tuition breaks not available to out-of-state American students and legal immigrant students. The Dream Act would repeal a clearly worded provision in the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) that states:

Notwithstanding any other provision of law, an alien who is not lawfully present in the United States shall not be eligible on the basis of residence within a State (or a political subdivision) for any postsecondary education benefit unless a citizen or national of the United States is eligible for such a benefit (in no less an amount, duration, and scope) without regard to whether the citizen or national is such a resident.

Ten states defied that federal law and offered in-state tuition to illegal aliens: California, Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, and Washington. The last time the DREAM Act champions tried to tack their scheme onto a larger immigration proposal, they snuck in language that would absolve those ten states of their law-breaking by repealing the 1996 law retroactively–and also offered a special path to green cards and citizenship for illegal alien students.

That’s right. A key feature of this “immigration reform” bill includes repealing old laws meant to discourage illegal immigration–and then absolving all the states and the beneficiaries that thumbed their nose at the federal law.

Oh, yeah, that’ll really help discourage border crossings.

2) It creates a new “UNITED STATES-MEXICO BORDER ENFORCEMENT REVIEW COMMISSION” (Title I, Section 138) that appears to be a Trojan Horse for more proxy meddling by Mexican consular officials hell-bent on undermining border enforcement and interior enforcement. Members from the law enforcement community will be balanced out by members from “academia, religious leaders, civic leaders or community leaders” (read: the open-borders lobby). Their purpose:

The Commission shall review, examine, and make recommendations regarding border enforcement policies,
strategies, and programs, including recommendations regarding

(1) the protection of human and civil rights of community
residents and migrants along the international border
between the United States and Mexico;

(2) the adequacy and effectiveness of human and civil
rights training of enforcement personnel on such border;

(3) the adequacy of the complaint process within the
agencies and programs of the Department that are
employed when an individual files a grievance;

(4) the effect of the operations, technology, and
enforcement infrastructure along such border on the-

(A) environment;
(B) cross border traffic and commerce; and
(C) the quality of life of border communities;

(5) local law enforcement involvement in the enforcement
of Federal immigration law; and

(6) any other matters regarding border enforcement
policies, strategies, and programs the Commission
determines appropriate.

Sounds innocuous, right? Well, here’s a thorough reminder of how this agenda works in practice to undermine rank-and-file border enforcement.

3) It promises to create a database to track exiting temporary visitors that was mandated more than 10 years and has yet to see the light of day. Here it is in Section 130. Yadda, yadda, yadda. As I reported a week after the 9/11 attacks:

The U.S. remains the only major industrialized nation in the world with no centralized system for monitoring alien visa-holders. As part of a 1996 immigration reform measure, Congress mandated an automated entry-exit tracking system for all foreign nationals. But with bipartisan cooperation, President Clinton effectively repealed it and replaced it with a toothless database requirement that remains unenforced. Over 40 percent of illegal aliens in this country are tourists who overstay their visas. What good is an expiration date if no one enforces it?

The nationwide entry-exit database was mandated in 1996, sabotaged by special interests until 9/11, stonewalled again after the terrorist attacks, and just recently shelved by the again by the Bush administration because they said it was too burdensome and costly.

Here’s a novel idea: Instead of using another promise to build this database as window-dressing for shamnesty, why doesn’t Congress just do what it said it would do in 1996 and re-stated it would do after 9/11: Build the damned database, make sure it works, and make sure it is integrated with other DHS and FBI databases.

4) The requirements for proof of eligibility and bogus background checks for the illegal alien amnesty are a joke. Illegal aliens would be allowed to use the following, easily faked documents for their “Z visa” applications:

(I) bank records;
(II) business records;
(III) employer records;
(IV) records of a labor union or day labor
center;
(V) remittance records;
(VI) sworn affidavits from nonrelatives who
have direct knowledge of the alien’s work, that
contain-14
(a) the name, address, and telephone
number of the affiant;
(b) the nature and duration of the
relationship between the affiant and the
alien; and
(c) other verification or information.

Who would be verifying these documents as legitimate? Yeah, the same immigration/homeland security bureaucracy that is incapable of stopping the Bush administration-approved spread of bogus matricula consular cards.

Former DOJ/AG adviser on immigration law Kris Kobach sheds light on three more goodies (I’ve added hyperlinks to the provisions he points to):

5)”The bill effectively shuts down our immigration-court system. If an alien in the removal process is eligible for the Z visa, the immigration judge must close the proceedings and offer the alien the chance to apply for the amnesty. The wheels of justice won’t just turn slowly, they’ll go in reverse.”

6) “The bill transforms the federal Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from a law-enforcement agency into an amnesty-distribution center. If ICE officials apprehend an alien who appears eligible for the Z visa (in other words, just about any illegal alien), they can’t detain him. Instead, ICE must help him apply for the Z visa. Rather than initiating removal proceedings, ICE will be initiating amnesty applications. It’s like turning the Drug Enforcement Agency into a needle-distribution network.”

7) “The bill even lets gang members get the amnesty. This comes at a time when violent international gangs have brought mayhem to our cities. More than 30,000 gang members operate in 33 states, trafficking in drugs, arms and people. Deporting illegal-alien gang members has been a top ICE priority. This bill would end that: Under it, a gang member qualifies for the Z-visa privileges as long as he simply signs a “renunciation of gang affiliation.” He can keep his tattoos.

John Fonte has more, including:

Faux enforcement “triggers”: The so-called “enforcement” measures do not require that the border be secure. They only require that a few thousand more Border Patrol agents be hired (not deployed); that about half (370 miles) of the already authorized 700 miles of border fence be built; and that a few other bureaucratic inputs are announced. Then DHS will authorize the second phase of the amnesty by awarding the Z visas. Can anyone imagine Michael Chertoff declaring that these phony “triggers” have not been met?

No real merit or skills-based (point) system instead current extended family chain migration is accelerated: The chain migration of extended family members will continue and be greatly expanded for the next eight years and only then would a skills-based merit (points) system supposedly go into effect. That is, if you really believe that after eight years a skills system would be adopted against strong business and liberal opposition.

Stanley Kurtz adds more about the point system:

As far as I can tell, absolutely critical details of the merit-based immigration “point system” have not yet been set. In particular, we need to know if there is going to be a “pass mark,” a minimum grade under the point system that must be attained before an applicant can immigrate. We also need to know if the “pass mark” will “float” based on the scores of applicants.

These seemingly abstruse questions are actually of huge importance. A low pass mark could effectively obviate the purpose of the shift from family reunification to a merit system, allowing the same people who would have gotten in under family unification to come in under “merit.” In other words, a low “pass mark” could turn the so-called shift to a merit system into pure window dressing. On the other hand, if the pass mark “floats” based on applicant quality, low skilled immigrants with little education and poor English skills would get a substantially reduced share of visas.

Seemingly small details in how this and other matters are resolved can have big implications. But as far as I can tell, we still know nothing about a possible pass mark, floating, or related issues. In a sense, the whole question is silly, since the family reunification policy supposedly being replaced by a merit system is actually going to be accelerated for eight years, by which time a merit system will likely have been gutted.

The Heritage Foundation lists the top 10 ways the Bush-Kennedy amnesty undermines the rule of law.

***

Numbers USA notes these amendments to be offered in an attempt to salvage the unsalvageable:

* Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) – reduces the annual importation of workers under the bill’s guestworker programs to 200,000 workers per year;

* Sens. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) – changes the cut-off date for reducing the “backlog” of family-sponsored immigration applicants from May 1, 2005, to January 1, 2007, and adds 110,000 green cards a year for adult children and sibling backlog reduction;

* Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) – imposes a surcharge on illegal aliens granted amnesty to help states pay for the medical and educational services such immigrants would claim;

* Sen. Cornyn – allows Federal law enforcement agents to use information from visa applications to investigate allegations of fraud in the “legalization” process;

* Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) – shores up the “trigger” provision to ensure that a crackdown on the border succeeds before additional job programs are extended to illegal workers and future immigrants;

* Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) – requires illegal aliens to return to their home country to apply for amnesty; and

* Sen. Menendez – adds an additional 800,000 family reunification green cards for applicants who applied between May 2005 and January 2007 (this is in addition to the 567,000 already added under the bill).

Reader Steve J. e-mails: “I’m glad the LA School District is so pro-First Amendment. Will the District also be supporting the First Amendment by providing bus transportation so students can go to their house of worship of choice for the National Day of Prayer?”

Update: The downside you won’t see today…MS-13 convictions…U.S. charges 22 in alleged fraudulent identification ring based in Chicago; Cell leader allegedly ordered murders of competitors in Mexico…Border: The Movie…

Update: Check out “You Don’t Speak for Me” for a diverse perspective on illegal immigration.

Update: Have you read about Hillary’s radical La Raza adviser?

Update: Here come the reconquista shirts!

***

Let’s start off today’s May Day illegal alien rally day with some misleading immigration numbers:

The Drudge Report trumpeted the NYTimes spin by headlining this stat:

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, facing intense political pressure to toughen enforcement, removed 221,664 illegal immigrants from the country over the last year, an increase of more than 37,000 — about 20 percent — over the year before, according to the agency’s tally.

221,664.

It sounds like we’re getting serious about immigration enforcement–until I remind you of this inconvenient truth that will get glossed over in all the MSM sob stories today:

U.S. Can’t Account for 600,000 Fugitives
March 26, 2007

Teams assigned to make sure foreigners ordered out of the United States actually leave have a backlog of more than 600,000 cases and can’t accurately account for the fugitives’ whereabouts, the government reported Monday.

The report by the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general found that the effectiveness of teams assigned to find the fugitives was hampered by “insufficient detention capacity, limitations of an immigration database and inadequate working space.”

Even though more than $204 million was allocated for 52 fugitive operations teams since 2003, a backlog of 623,292 cases existed as of August of 2006, the report said.

The number of illegal immigrants in the United States has been estimated at between 11.5 million and 12 million. About 5.4 percent of them are believed to be “fugitive aliens,” those who have failed to leave the country after being ordered out.

The inspector general found there is not enough bed space available to detain such fugitives and that agents are hampered by an inaccurate database. Other factors that limit the teams’ effectiveness are insufficient staffing, the report said.

Until the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, attempts to catch such fugitives were mostly carried out by teams not exclusively devoted to the task. After the attacks, an Absconder Apprehension Initiative was created within the Justice Department to find, apprehend and deport such immigrants. When the Homeland Security Department was created in March 2003, it assumed responsibility.

Plans for the new office stated that it aimed to eliminate the case backlog by the end of 2012, although a field manual put the timetable at 2009, the report said.

Yet “despite the efforts of the teams, the backlog of fugitive alien cases has increased each fiscal year since the program was established in February 2002,” the inspector general said.

221,664 “removed” illegal aliens vs 623,292 released illegal alien fugitives.

That’s right, people.

There are nearly three times as many officially designated illegal alien fugitives freed by the feds as there are illegal aliens who have been removed over the last year.

Just doing the context-setting and number-crunching the rest of the MSM won’t do…

***

Guess what else? More and more of the illegal aliens caught by immigration authorities and ordered to appear for deportation hearings are skipping out. From the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General:

As the IG explains:

Each year, thousands of illegal aliens fail to respond to orders to appear at their scheduled immigration hearing. In most of these cases, the Immigration Judge (IJ) will conduct an in absentia (in the absence of) hearing and order the alien removed from the U.S. However, a failure to appear does not always result in an in absentia order. In 4 percent of the cases the IJ may also administratively close a failure to appear case without ordering the alien removed. Of the 461,556-immigration judge decisions and administrative closures issued by the Executive Office of Immigration and Review (EOIR) between FY 2001 and FY 2004, 39 percent (181,807) were issued to illegal aliens who had been released but later failed to appear at their respective immigration hearings.

Although the percentage of released aliens who failed to appear at their respective hearings has declined in recent years, the total number of aliens failing to appear is increasing.

During FY 2001, 42,030 aliens failed to appear compared to 52,890 who failed to appear during FY 2004, a 26 percent increase.

In fact, according to DHS’s Detention and Removal Office, 85 percent of the illegal aliens released that have been issued final orders of removal, will abscond. That goes not just for illegal aliens from Mexico, but for illegal aliens from terror-friendly and terror-sponsoring nations:

Illegal Aliens from Special Interest Countries (SIC) and State Sponsors of Terrorism (SST) Countries. A significant number of OTMs that are apprehended and released each year originate from SIC and SST. From FY 2001 through the first half of FY 2005, 91,516 SIC and SST aliens were apprehended of which 45,000 (49%) were later released. It is not known exactly how many of these SIC and SST aliens were ultimately issued final orders of removal and were actually removed since such data is not tracked by DRO. However, assuming SIC and SST aliens are being removed at the same rate as other apprehended and released aliens, 85 percent of the SIC and SST aliens released who eventually receive final orders of removal will abscond.

One more updated graph for you from the immigration court bureaucracy shows that failure to appear rates rose again in 2005 and held steady through 2006:

And there’s this truly frightening reality:

[The Detention and Removal Office] estimates that in FY 2007 there will be 605,000 foreign-born individuals admitted to state correctional facilities and local jails during the year for committing crimes in the U.S. Of this number, DRO estimates half (302,500) will be removable aliens.

Currently, most of these incarcerated aliens are being released into the U.S. at the conclusion of their respective sentences due to the lack of DRO resources.

Homeland security? What homeland security?

According to this article, Siraj was “jailed for three days in February in connection with an immigration matter.”

And according to this article, Siraj’s uncle said his nephew “would not do anything to hurt his family because the family is due in court Oct. 21 to fight a deportation proceeding.”

A deportation officer e-mailed me to say, “I am now guessing that he either entered illegally or entered as a student and violated status (by working, etc) and was placed in removal proceedings – hard to tell. Either way, he doesn’t appear to be here legally if in removal proceedings…”

It wouldn’t be the first time a Middle Eastern militant NYC bomb plotter took advantage of our catch-and-release approach to immigration enforcement. As I noted in this column,

Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer, a Palestinian bomb-builder, entered the U.S. illegally through Canada in 1996 and 1997. He claimed political asylum based on alleged persecution by Israelis, was released on a reduced $5,000 bond posted by a man who was himself an illegal alien, and then skipped his asylum hearing after calling his attorney and lying about his whereabouts. In June 1997, after his lawyer withdrew Mezer’s asylum claim, a federal immigration judge ordered Mezer to leave the country on a “voluntary departure order.” Mezer ignored the useless piece of paper. He joined a New York City bombing plot before being arrested in July 1997 after a roommate tipped off local police.

For more on the deportation abyss, click here.

Update: Reader Juan Mann, the proprietor of www.deportaliens.com, writes: “I’ll bet you the Pakistani is applying for asylum before the EOIR Immigration Court……..If he’s an F1 student overstay, or B1/B2 visitor overstay, an asylum application is the only way to keep things tied up for a LONG TIME before the EOIR.”

IMMIGRATION ATTORNEY DENYSE SABAGH: Well, I would disagree that people had to learn English before they came to the United States. That never was the case.

Tell that to the legions of foreign students and workers in the U.S. who are still required to demonstrate English proficiency today (at least the ones who haven’t hired lawyers like Sabagh to weasel their way out of taking the language test). I didn’t get to point this out, however, because the audience was too busy booing me.

Sabagh’s other laugh line (well, nobody was laughing but me) was her complaint that “there’s a tremendous amount of law enforcement going on right now. As a matter of fact, there’s-there’s… The law enforcement today is much more stringent and punitive than it used to be.”

Reality check: Just outside the WETA studio where this show was taped is a tax-subsidized day labor shelter for illegal aliens that was opposed by WETA’s own CEO, Sharon Rockefeller. On the evening of the taping, a few dozen men hung around the shelter. Everyone in Arlington knows they are immigration law-breakers. No one, including the local acting police chief who attended the town meeting, enforced the law against the illegal aliens.

I tried to point this out, but Sabagh was too busy blabbing out the urgent need for another illegal alien amnesty.