New boss at ICE ineligible for job, says critic

The acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement—who oversees the nation's second-largest federal investigative agency—may not be eligible for the permanent position under laws set up to keep politics out of the agency, according to one former high-level employee.

When John Sandweg, a former Arizona criminal defense attorney and associate of outgoing Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, was named acting director of ICE, several critics questioned his credentials. Some told FoxNews.com his appointment seemed to be political, and others said the agency needed a leader who had come up through the ranks.

“Given that there are literally dozens of people within ICE who have more experience in management/law enforcement and meet these qualifications, there is no excuse for placing Mr. Sandweg as acting director of ICE,” said Anthony Ho, who was assistant special agent in charge of ICE’s San Francisco division before retiring in December.

Ho noted that the 2002 law which established the agency, then known as Bureau of Border Security, explicitly requires that the director “shall have a minimum of 5 years professional experience in law enforcement, and a minimum of 5 years of management experience.” The law was designed specifically to prevent the agency from becoming politicized, Ho said.

It was not clear if the same requirements apply to an acting director, but one source told FoxNews.com it was likely the intent that they would, otherwise an acting director could be installed indefinitely simply to get around them.

Via: Fox News

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Obama administration acknowledged releasing illegals who didn’t fit ‘priority’ for deportation

Letters obtained by The Daily Caller show the Obama administration has acknowledged releasing illegal immigrants from law enforcement custody and back into the general U.S. population even when they are outside the qualifications outlined in the president’s new immigration policy.

In March, the administration released an illegal alien from law enforcement custody for the reason that he did not “fit” any administrative “priority” for deportation.

On March 27, according to the Fox News Channel, a “veteran” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer and one of his colleagues “were conducting surveillance on a vehicle in Newark, Del. with [license] plates that were registered to a criminal alien target.”

“During the surveillance, they observed an individual get into the vehicle. The person was detained, questioned and taken to an ICE office so that his fingerprints could be run through a federal database,” Fox News’ Todd Starnes reported in August. “The individual was not their criminal alien target. However, he was a 35-year-old illegal immigrant from Mexico who had ten previous traffic violations — including driving without a license.”

When that Fox story broke, National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council president Chris Crane said the ICE agent had exercised “prosecutorial discretion” and decided to “charge [the suspect] as being in the United States illegally and let the judge sort it out.”

That National ICE Council is a subset of the American Federation of Government Employees, an AFL-CIO member labor union. (RELATED: Immigrants don’t have to prove they meet DREAM Act criteria to avoid charges, ICE union chief says)

Political leaders inside ICE ordered the agent to release that criminal alien suspect, however. Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions wrote in a letter to ICE director John Morton on Aug. 3 that the suspect was released because he wasn’t a “presidential priority.”

Via: The Daily Caller

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Is Obama Administration ‘Cooking The Books’ To Achieve Record Deportation Numbers?

Internal documents obtained by the House Judiciary Committee show that the Obama administration has been “cooking the books” in order to reach their “record” number of deported illegal immigrants, chairman Rep. Lamar Smith said Friday.

Based on the internal U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) documents, the number of removals are actually down, the opposite of what the administration has been claiming.

According to the committee’s review, in 2011 officials at the Department of Homeland Security began including the number of individuals removed through the Alien Transfer Exit Program (ATEP) in its annual removal numbers. ATEP is a program which moves apprehended illegal immigrants to another point along the border.

The committee chair claims that counting those individuals as removals is misleading because there are no repercussions for illegal immigrants who are deported through the program, and they can simply try to re-enter.

“It is dishonest to count illegal immigrants apprehended by the Border Patrol along the border as ICE removals,” Smith explained in a statement. “And these ‘removals’ from the Border Patrol program do not subject the illegal immigrant to any penalties or bars for returning to the U.S. This means a single illegal immigrant can show up at the border and be removed numerous times in a single year — and counted each time as a removal.”

Given the new information, the committee’s Republican majority subtracted the ATEP removals from ICE’s deportation totals.

With the ATEP subtraction, in 2011 the estimated 397,000 deportations become approximately 360,000, and the 2012 removals to date drop from about 334,000 to an estimated 263,000, according to the committee estimates. Projections for number of people to be deported by end of the year drops from 400,000 to 315,000 removals.

Via: The Daily Caller

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Immigration agents sue to stop Obama’s non-deportation policy

Saying they're fed up with being told they can't do their jobs, 10 immigration agents on Thursday sued the Obama administration to try to halt the president's new non-deportation policy and an earlier memo instructing them not to go after rank-and-file illegal immigrants.

The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Texas, adds a legal controversy to the political fight that has been brewing over President Obama's immigration policies, which have steadily narrowed the range of immigrants the government is targeting for deportation.

The 10 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and deportation officers said Mr. Obama's policies force them to choose between enforcing the law and being reprimanded by superiors, or listening to superiors and violating their own oaths of office and a 1996 law that requires them to put those who entered the country illegally into deportation proceedings.

Upping the ante, the agents are being represented by a high-profile lawyer, Kris W. Kobach, secretary of state in Kansas and the chief promoter of state immigration crackdowns such as Arizona's tough law.

"ICE is at a point now where agents are being told to break federal law, they're pretty much told that any illegal alien under age of 31 is going to be let go. You can imagine, these law enforcement officers are being put in a horrible position," Mr. Kobach said.

Last week, at Mr. Obama's direction, the Homeland Security Department began taking applications from those 30 years of age or younger who came to the U.S. as children and who have kept a fairly clean criminal record. They are being granted "deferred action," which is an official notice they are not to be deported, and will be allowed to obtain work permits to stay and get jobs legally in the United States.

Via: Washington Times

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ICE Chief Of Staff On Leave After New Allegations Of Lewd Conduct Surface

The top Homeland Security official accused of cultivating a "frat-house"-style work environment has "voluntarily placed herself on leave" amid an internal review, the department told FoxNews.com late Tuesday evening -- just hours after FoxNews.com contacted the agency about new allegations against her. 

The official, Suzanne Barr, is chief of staff for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Two more ICE employees came forward this week to complain about "lewd" conduct inside the agency, submitting sworn affidavits that depict graphic comments made by two top officials working under DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano. 

The affidavits were given as part of a discrimination and retaliation suit filed earlier this year by James T. Hayes Jr., the head of the New York office for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

The two new affidavits described separate incidents in 2009. Both accounts described the actions of Barr, who was also mentioned in Hayes' lawsuit. 

Via Fox News

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ICE Agent Faces Suspension For Arresting Illegal Alien

A veteran Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent is facing suspension after he refused to release an illegal immigrant who was not considered a priority target under the Obama Administration’s new immigration enforcement policies, according to documents provided exclusively to Fox News.

“They’re punishing law enforcement officers who are just trying to uphold U.S. law,” said Chris Crane, president of the National ICE Council. Crane is a union representative acting on the unidentified officer’s behalf.The officer under fire is an 18-year law enforcement and military veteran.

On March 27 he and another officer were conducting surveillance on a vehicle in Newark, Del. with plates that were registered to a criminal alien target. During the surveillance, they observed an individual get into the vehicle. The person was detained, questioned and taken to an ICE office so that his fingerprints could be run through a federal database.

Via: Fox Nation

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