Obama Attempts to Focus on Deportation of Violent Criminals

A brief discussion of:

Barbara Barrett, More illegal immigrants deported, The Charlotte Observer, Aug. 15, 2010.

Fingerprints Misused to Deport Immigrants?, CBSNEWS Politics, Aug. 10, 2010.

Each day violent criminals pass through America's jail systems, and many eventually end up back on American streets at some point or another.  Thankfully, this does not have to be the case in every situation.

Immigration and Nationality Act § 237(a)(2) provides that the commission of certain crimes may subject an alien to immediate deportation proceedings.  Some of the particular types of offenses are crimes of moral turpitude, aggravated felonies, high speed flight, and multiple criminal convictions.  In an effort to get violent criminals out of America, the Obama administration and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency ("ICE") have recently attempted to hone in on top tier level 1 offenders—a level 1 criminal immigrant is considered the most serious type of offender.  One of their strategies is called Secure Communities.  The protocol of this program is to fingerprint criminals passing through American correctional facilities and cross-reference federal immigration databases in an effort to determine status.  Department of Homeland Security spokesman Richard Rocha claims to be seeing success in finding and deporting violent criminals, but there are many critics of the program.

CBS News reports that most immigration advocates say that despite the government's proposed focus on the "worst of the worst" criminal immigrants, the Obama administration and its agencies have still been spending too much time on lower-level criminals or non-criminals.  Rocha responded to questioning by reminding the general public that most offenders are level 2 and 3 and not level 1, and that Secure Communities is "a beneficial partnership tool for ICE and state and local law enforcement agencies helping to identify, prioritize and remove convicted criminal aliens not only from the communities, but also from the country."

Information in this article was obtained courtesy of The Charlotte Observer, CBSNEWS, and the Immigration and Nationality Act.