What if he was a foreigner?

Sunday, October 9th, 2011

Mark Wahlberg Recently I stumbled upon a news item on a Boston Fox News website about a Cambodian teenager that immigration officials released because he could not be deported to his homeland. He had been convicted and punished for his crime, stabbing and beating to death of a teenage girl eleven years ago. After serving his time for the crime, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was going to deport him, but when it could not, he was released from detention under…

“Worst of the Worst,” Part 2

Saturday, September 24th, 2011

Last week I blogged on the attribution to President Obama that he wanted to deport “the worst of the worst” in articles and blogs. In the context of the articles and blogs, referring to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s announced (but hardly yet implemented) policy of exercising prosecutorial discretion and not deporting everyone currently in removal proceedings, the writers give the impression that the President considers millions of people who may be subject to deportation as the worst people in…

‘The worst of the worst,’ really?

Saturday, September 17th, 2011

President Obama and the Department of Homeland Security, according to press reports, are undergoing a review of hundreds of thousands of pending removal cases, people in immigration court facing possible deportation from the United States, to determine cases that are not worth pursuing. I have commented about this in a movie, here. One concern I express in the movie is that the heightened focus on removing aliens with criminal convictions in their past, particularly long-term permanent residents with decade-old convictions,…