Immigration and Customs Enforcement chief: President Obama not soft on illegal immigrants

by Daniel González - Aug. 13, 2010 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic

The Obama administration is committed to tough enforcement of the nation's immigration laws and is not "pro-amnesty," the director of the nation's immigration-enforcement agency said Thursday.

The Obama administration removed a record 380,000 people during the past fiscal year and made a priority of deporting illegal immigrants who pose the greatest threat to public safety, said John Morton, director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Morton was in Phoenix to announce that ICE agents had just completed a three-day sweep in Arizona tracking down illegal immigrants with criminal records. He also defended the agency's track record amid criticism that President Barack Obama's administration has been lax on immigration enforcement and hasn't done enough to secure the border.

Morton said this week's operation in Arizona was the largest ever conducted in the state. It resulted in the arrest of 63 illegal immigrants. At least 25 already have been deported.

The operation took place from Monday to Wednesday in conjunction with the U.S. Marshals Service. Officials fanned out across the state and made arrests in Phoenix, Tucson, Sedona, Mesa, Tempe and Prescott. ICE has launched five similar operations in other parts of the United States, and more are planned.

Of the 63 illegal immigrants arrested, 28 had been convicted of serious crimes, 24 were convicted of less serious crimes and three had been convicted of minor crimes.

Eight were non-criminal fugitives who had been ordered deported but didn't leave or who had been previously deported.

Those arrested were from nine countries: Canada, Czech Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Uzbekistan.

The arrests included a 45-year-old Mexican woman convicted for conspiracy to commit wire fraud in a scheme that netted more than $820,000.

A 55-year-old Mexican man convicted of selling meth in 2003 also was arrested and will, for the second time, be prosecuted for re-entering the country illegally. The man was convicted of felony re-entry in 2009.

The operations are part of the Obama administration's strategy of targeting illegal immigrants who pose the biggest threat to public safety, Morton said.

The agency deported 81,429 immigrants from Arizona during the past fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30.

Through Aug. 2 of this fiscal year, ICE removed more than 66,000 illegal immigrants from Arizona, 24,950 of them convicted criminals.

Obama also planned to sign a $600 million bill today to pay for putting more Border Patrol agents and equipment on the border with Mexico.

The bill will fund the hiring of 1,000 new Border Patrol agents to be deployed at critical areas along the border, 250 more ICE agents and 250 more Customs and Border Protection officers.

It also will pay for new communications equipment and greater use of unmanned surveillance drones.

But tough enforcement alone will not solve the nation's problem with illegal immigration, Morton said. He said enforcement must be coupled with comprehensive reforms that include allowing illegal immigrants to earn legal status as long as they agree to pay fines and wait at the back of the line.

"The right answer is a balance of serious, and tough, sensible enforcement with rational bipartisan comprehensive federal immigration reform," Morton said.

Despite the number of removals, the Obama administration has come under fire for being lax on immigration enforcement and not doing enough to secure the southwestern border with Mexico against illegal immigration and drug traffickers.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and other lawmakers have repeatedly cited federal inaction as the reason the state needed its own law requiring local police to question and arrest illegal-immigrant suspects.

At the end of July, some GOP lawmakers also accused the Obama administration of pursuing a "backdoor amnesty" for illegal immigrants after the draft of a government memo surfaced that discussed the possibility of allowing some illegal immigrants to remain in the country without fear of deportation through a program known as "deferred action."

Also in July, the union that represents 7,000 rank-and-file ICE agents and employees announced publicly that the union had unanimously passed a "vote of no confidence" for Morton and ICE detention-policy director Phyllis Coven, saying they had abandoned the agency's core mission of enforcing immigration laws and instead had directed their attention to campaigning for programs and policies related to amnesty, giving illegal immigrants who are now in the country legal status.

During a news conference, Morton bristled at the union's complaint that he and the Obama administration are anti-enforcement and pro-amnesty.

"Neither of which is true," said Morton, a former federal prosecutor. "We don't support amnesty. I don't support amnesty, and we are not anti-enforcement. . . .

"We are about enforcing the laws sensibly within the resources Congress gives us."

ICE has the resources to remove about 400,000 people a year, he said.

The question is, he added: Who should those 400,000 people be?

"From my perspective, it ought to be public safety, getting criminals off the streets, securing our border and making sure we go after people who game the system. Period," Morton said.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2010/08/13/20100813immigration-enforcement-president-obama.html

The American dream may in fact be slipping away.

The white picket fence, Social Security, sending your children to college -- what was once an attainable reality has become increasingly hard to achieve.

The harsh reality for today's middle class is that many of them go to work just to get by. Arianna Huffington's new book, "Third World America", sheds light on many of the crucial ways in which it has been short-changed. From our failing education system to the runaway greed of the financial services sector, America's middle class is facing on onslaught from all sides.

Below, we've compiled eight surprising and disturbing facts about America's shrinking middle class from Arianna's book - In 2005, the bottom 20 percent of household earners had an average income of $10,655 while households in the top 20 percent made nearly 160,000 – a disparity of 1,500 percent, the highest gap ever recorded, Arianna notes in Third World America.

"According to a report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, at least twenty-nine states have made cuts to public health programs, twenty-four states have cut programs for the elderly and disabled, twenty-nine states have cut aid to K–12 education, and thirty-nine states have cut assistance to public colleges and universities.

America’s states faced a cumulative budget gap of $166 billion for fiscal 2010. Total shortfalls through fiscal 2011 are estimated at $380 billion—and could be even higher depending on what happens to unemployment. These are massive numbers. But when you remember that we spent $182 billion to bail out AIG ($12.9 billion of which went straight to Goldman Sachs), you realize that this amount alone would be more than enough to close the 2010 budget gap in every state in the Union. Toss in the $45 billion we gave to now-making-a-profit Bank of America and the $45 billion we gave to now-making-a-profit Citigroup, and we would be well on the way to ensuring that no state’s vital services are cut through 2011."
-Arianna Huffington, Third World America

"According to a report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, at least twenty-nine states have made cuts to public health programs, twenty-four states have cut programs for the elderly and disabled, twenty-nine states have cut aid to K–12 education, and thirty-nine states have cut assistance to public colleges and universities.

America’s states faced a cumulative budget gap of $166 billion for fiscal 2010. Total shortfalls through fiscal 2011 are estimated at $380 billion—and could be even higher depending on what happens to unemployment. These are massive numbers. But when you remember that we spent $182 billion to bail out AIG ($12.9 billion of which went straight to Goldman Sachs), you realize that this amount alone would be more than enough to close the 2010 budget gap in every state in the Union. Toss in the $45 billion we gave to now-making-a-profit Bank of America and the $45 billion we gave to now-making-a-profit Citigroup, and we would be well on the way to ensuring that no state’s vital services are cut through 2011." -Arianna Huffington, Third World America

According to the White House, in 2004, the last year data on this was compiled, U.S. multinational corporations paid roughly $16 billion in taxes on $700 billion in foreign active earnings— putting their tax rate at around 2.3 percent. Know many middle-class Americans getting off that easy at tax time?" - Arianna Huffington, Third World America

"In studying car crashes across the country, the Transportation Construction coalition determined that badly maintained or managed roads are responsible for $217 billion in car crashes annually – far more than headline-grabbing alcohol-related accidents ($130 billion) and speed-related pile-ups ($97 billion)", Arianna writes in Third World America.

But Americans are paying an even higher price for our deteriorating roads. Of the 42,000 road fatalities each year, 53% are at least partially the result of poor road conditions. "We are currently spending $70 billion annually on improving our highways, but that’s nowhere near the $186 billion a year that is needed. It's a collision of need versus resources; for far too many of us, it can be fatal," she adds.

America's educational system is failing: "Eight years ago, amid much fanfare, the D.C. establishment passed No Child Left Behind...but it turned out to be reform in name only," Arianna explains Third World America . "Despite a goal of 100 percent proficiency in reading and math, eight years later we are not even close. In Alabama, only 20 percent of eighth graders are proficient in math. In California, it’s just 23 percent. In New York, it’s 34 percent."

“Barry Bosworth and Rosanna Smart of the Brookings Institution found that the catastrophic collapse of the 2008 sub-prime mortgage market resulted in the disappearance of $13 trillion in American household wealth between mid-2007 and March 2009... on average, U.S. households lost one quarter of their wealth in that period," cites Huffington. She continues, “We are facing nothing less than a national emergency: 2.8 million homes faced foreclosure in 2009, and an estimated 3 million more are expected to be foreclosed on in 2010. If there was ever a middle-class Katrina, this is it." - Arianna Huffington, Third World America.

"As MIT professor Simon Johnson recounted in the Atlantic, between 1973 and 1985, the financial industry’s share of domestic corporate profits topped out at 16 percent. In the 1990s, it spanned between 21 percent and 30 percent. Just before the financial crisis hit, it stood at 41 percent. The share of our economy devoted to making things of value is shrinking, while the share devoted to valuing made-up things (credit-swap derivatives, anyone?) is expanding. It’s the financialization of our economy." - Arianna Huffington, Third World America

"The vast majority of people who file for bankruptcy are middle-class folks who can’t pay their bills because they’ve lost their jobs or been hit with high medical bills. In fact, a 2009 study by researchers at Harvard and Ohio University showed that health-care problems were the root cause of 62 percent of all personal bankruptcies in America in 2007. When the same researchers did this study across five states in 2001, health-care problems caused only 50 percent of bankruptcy filings. According to the American Bankruptcy Institute, America had 1.4 million personal bankruptcies in 2009, a 32 percent increase over the previous year. Put another way: Every thirty seconds, someone in this country files for bankruptcy in the wake of a serious illness." - Arianna Huffington, Third World America.

SOURCE:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/09/8-surprising-facts-about_n_675545.html#s121657