ICE officials set quotas to deport more illegal immigrants

Spencer Hsu and Andrew Becker of the Washington Post shed some troubling light on the Obama administration’s deportation efforts:

“Seeking to reverse a steep drop in deportations, U.S. immigration authorities have set controversial new quotas for agents. At the same time, officials have stepped back from an Obama administration commitment to focus enforcement efforts primarily on illegal immigrants who are dangerous or have violent criminal backgrounds. The moves, outlined in internal documents and a recent e-mail by a senior U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official to field directors nationwide, differ from pledges by ICE chief John T. Morton and his boss, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, to focus enforcement on the most dangerous illegal immigrants. That approach represented a break from the mass factory raids and neighborhood sweeps the Bush administration used to drive up arrests.”

 KJ

UPDATE (March 30): ICE issued aresponse to the Post article: “Significant portions of the memo cited in The Washington Post (3/27/10 – Becker/Hsu) did not reflect our policies, was sent without my authorization, and has since been withdrawn and corrected. We are strongly committed to carrying out our priorities to remove serious criminal offenders first and we definitively do not set quotas.”

KJ