Obama Administration Catches and Releases Criminal Illegal Aliens on ‘Massive Scale’

Any immigration reform bill must make enforcement and securing our borders top priorities, or it’s no reform (that would benefit the American people) at all. The Center for Immigration Studies released a report that doesn’t bode well for the integrity of the rule of law or the safety of law-abiding Americans. According to the report, ICE catches and releases criminal aliens “on a massive scale.”

Many of the aliens ignored by ICE were convicted criminals. In 2013, ICE agents released 68,000 aliens with criminal convictions, or 35 percent of all criminal aliens they reported encountering. The criminal alien releases typically occur without formal notice to local law enforcement agencies and victims.

These findings raise further alarm over the Obama administration’s pending review of deportation practices, which reportedly may further expand the administration’s abuse of “prosecutorial discretion”. Interior enforcement activity has already declined 40 percent since the imposition of “prosecutorial discretion” policies in 2011.1 Rather than accelerating this decline, there is an urgent need to review and reverse the public safety and fiscal harm cause by the president’s policies.