DHS releasing illegal immigrants before sequester

The gov­ern­ment spends about $164 a day to keep an ille­gal immi­grant fac­ing depor­ta­tion jailed.

WASHINGTON — A week before manda­tory bud­get cuts go into effect across the gov­ern­ment, the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity has started releas­ing ille­gal immi­grants being held in immi­gra­tion jails across the coun­try, Immi­gra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment said Tuesday.

Gillian Chris­tensen, an ICE spokes­woman, said ICE has reviewed “sev­eral hun­dred cases” of immi­grants being held in jails around the coun­try and released them in the last week. They have been “placed on an appro­pri­ate, more cost-effective form of super­vised release,” she said.

Chris­tensen said the agency’s “pri­or­ity for deten­tion remains on seri­ous crim­i­nal offend­ers and other indi­vid­u­als who pose a sig­nif­i­cant threat to pub­lic safety.” She did not say how released immi­grants were selected or what jails they were released from.

Tuesday’s announce­ment of jail releases is the first tan­gi­ble impact of the loom­ing bud­get cuts for DHS.

The Obama admin­is­tra­tion has been issu­ing dire warn­ings about the impact of the seques­tra­tion, and DHS Sec­re­tary Janet Napoli­tano told reporters at the White House Mon­day that across-the-board cuts would affect the department’s core oper­a­tions, includ­ing bor­der secu­rity and air­port screen­ing operations.

She also warned that DHS might not be able to afford to keep the 34,000 immi­gra­tion jail beds man­dated by Con­gress. On aver­age last week, there were 30,773 peo­ple being held in ICE jails.

“I don’t think we can main­tain the same level of secu­rity at all places around the coun­try with sequester as with­out sequester,” said Napoli­tano, adding that the impact would be “‘like a rolling ball. It will keep growing.”

Accord­ing to the National Immi­gra­tion Forum, it costs the gov­ern­ment about $164 a day to keep an ille­gal immi­grant fac­ing depor­ta­tion jailed. In a report on immi­gra­tion deten­tion costs last year, the advo­cacy group said costs for super­vised release can range from about 30 cents to $14 a day.

Repub­li­cans law­mak­ers decried the releases Tuesday.

“It’s abhor­rent that Pres­i­dent (Barack) Obama is releas­ing crim­i­nals into our com­mu­ni­ties to pro­mote his polit­i­cal agenda on seques­tra­tion,” said House Judi­ciary Com­mit­tee Chair­man Bob Good­latte. “By releas­ing crim­i­nal immi­grants onto the streets, the admin­is­tra­tion is need­lessly endan­ger­ing Amer­i­can lives. It also under­mines our efforts to come together with the admin­is­tra­tion and reform our nation’s immi­gra­tion laws.”

The Obama admin­is­tra­tion asked for about $1.96 bil­lion for immi­gra­tion jail oper­a­tions in the last budget. That amounts to about $5.4 mil­lion a day, accord­ing to the National Immi­gra­tion Forum’s report.

Chris­tensen said Tues­day that released immi­grants will still face depor­ta­tion proceedings.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Feb 28 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.