Hearing Wrap Up: Oversight of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
September 22, 2016
Washington, D.C. – On Thursday, September 22, 2016, Director Sarah Saldaña testified before the House Judiciary Committee at an oversight hearing on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). ICE is the federal agency that is charged with enforcing U.S. immigration laws. However, under the policies of the Obama Administration and under the direction of Director Saldaña, ICE’s immigration enforcement efforts have withered away, which results in hundreds of thousands of unlawfully present and criminal aliens remaining in American communities.
Background:
- Under the Obama Administration, political appointees at the Department of Homeland Security and its component agency, ICE, have made unilateral changes to the immigration system. The Administration’s policies allow criminal aliens to evade the law, make our communities less safe, enable dangerous sanctuary city policies, and encourage more illegal immigration.
- In the past three years alone, ICE released over 86,000 convicted criminal aliens, including those with homicide, sexual assault, and kidnapping convictions. Additionally, nearly 370,000 known criminal aliens with deportation orders or in removal proceedings remain at large.
- On top of the Obama Administration’s lax immigration enforcement record, DHS Secretary Johnson recently directed a review to determine if private detention facilities used to detain the vast majority of unlawful and criminal aliens should continue to be used. In responseto questioning from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), Director Saldaña stated that if private detention facilities were closed, then the system would be turned upside down and ICE would not be able to meet its mandate of maintaining 34,000 detention beds.
- Director Saldaña failed to explain how the number of convictions associated with criminal aliens ICE released in Fiscal Year 2014 jumped from 79,059 to 92,347 —an increase of over 13,000—in just over four months. She also did not know how many of those aliens had been re-arrested for crimes after their release, but she agreed to provide that data to the Committee.
- As a result of a 2001 Supreme Court decision, thousands of criminal aliens ordered deported have not been removed, often because their home countries refuse to accept them back. Yet, under current law, the U.S. State Department is able to cease issuing visas to nationals of countries that refuse to accept the return of their citizens who have been ordered removed from the United States. Several members of the House Judiciary Committee pressed Director Saldaña to explain what she and DHS officials have done to pressure the State Department to exercise this authority. She admitted that DHS has not yet formally notified the State Department to use its mandatory authority. In addition, under current law, ICE has the authority to detain terrorist aliens who cannot be removed. Yet, Director Saldaña admitted that ICE released at least one alien with a terrorism-related conviction rather than using this authority.