On Tuesday, the Obama administration announced they’d be using the sequester as an excuse to release illegal immigrant detainees. The announcement came in the lead-up to sequestration’s launch on March 1, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement stating:
In order to make the best use of our limited detention resources in the current fiscal climate and to manage our detention population under current congressionally mandated levels, ICE has directed field offices to review the detained population to ensure it is in line with available funding. As a result of this review, a number of detained aliens have been released around the country and placed on an appropriate, more cost-effective form of supervised release.
These illegal immigrants will likely disappear from the law enforcement map. This is Barack Obama’s way of blackmailing the American people into supporting his calls for tax increases. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) responded in a statement:
The Administration’s decision to release thousands in ICE custody further reduces the chances of reaching a bipartisan immigration accord.
There is no logical or rational reason why the 5.3 percent cut to ICE’s operating budget would have to result in forcing law officers to immediately release already-apprehended illegal aliens and fugitives in federal detention. The last thing you would do to meet a budget cut of this size would be to voluntarily undertake actions that undermine the rule of law and endanger the public safety. These savings could be much more safely and rationally achieved, considering that they will be distributed among such areas as facilities maintenance, equipment maintenance, communications, travel, etc. The Administration also had months to plan for this eventuality and could have developed numerous alternatives to this reckless action.
It is clear the Administration is using the sequester as a convenient excuse to bow to political pressure from the amnesty groups, as it did with its unilateral decision to confer legal status on millions who are not lawfully present. With this new action, the administration has further demonstrated that it has no commitment to enforcing the law and cannot be trusted to deliver on any future promises of enforcement.
Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the book “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013).
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