Napolitano: Deportation reviews to begin shortly

[alp227]

Source: CNN

The Obama administration soon will begin its systematic review of the approximately 300,000 pending deportation cases, separating "high priority" cases involving criminals it wants to deport from "low priority" cases it will drop, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told Congress Wednesday.

The effort marks another point in an evolution of immigration enforcement away from the worksite raids of the Bush administration and towards deportations of illegal immigrants in prisons and jails.

Napolitano said a group of Homeland Security and Justice Department officials will begin a small "pilot" review of immigration cases in "two or three" weeks, and hopes to rapidly expand its efforts.

Under the policy announced last year, federal immigration officials will place the highest priority on deporting illegal immigrants who pose a danger to public safety and national security, while "administratively closing" other cases, taking into consideration a list of factors. Those factors include the person's length of time in the United States, whether the immigrant arrived as a child, served in the military and has a spouse, child or parent who is a U.S. citizen.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/19/politics/napolitano-deportation-reviews/index.html

[rapturedbyrobots]

1. Thanks but a little too late for my brother and MANY others

He got his legal permanent resident status revoked and was forcibly deported on charges that even the prosecuting attorney agreed were non-deportable offenses under existing Texas case law. This was during the Obama/Napolitano ramp UP of aggressive immigration deportation. Before the election cycle came full circle and they decided they need the Latino vote again, so are trying to triage some of the overflow to make it look like the numbers are going down.

I suspect that 'low-priority' cases will NOT be dropped, but instead subjected to even longer detentions (already you have to wait 3-6 months in an immigration detention center for an INITIAL hearing...more than 1 year for an appeal). The result is the following options: 1) a de facto 6 month jail sentence before you can even see a judge to decide if you should've been detained in the first place; 2) sign a voluntary withdrawal and get deported within a few weeks. More & more people will go for option #2 as the wait times get longer. This lets DHS deport MORE people (quasi-voluntarily) while keeping their forcible deportation numbers down for the election year.