She’s going to do all that she can to continue down the litigation path to allow secure borders…Jan Brewer has the “cojones” that our president does not have to look out for Americans, not just Arizonans, but all Americans, in this desire of ours to secure our borders and allow legal immigration to help build this country, as was the purpose of the immigration laws
Guess who said that? Who else but Sarah Palin!
The half-term—“I can serve the people of Alaska better on Fox News”—Governor of Alaska was on Fox News Sunday (where else?) talking about Arizona Governor Jan Brewer’s losing court battle to revive the moribund S.B. 1070 “show me your papers” law.
Catchy sound bites, especially when made on the safety of a facebook page or in a Fox News studio, are pretty easy to construct. It gets a little more difficult when you try to mix in facts.
Sarah Palin, Governor Jan Brewer, and others who claim Obama doesn’t have the “cojones” to enforce the immigration law may want to read yesterday’s TRAC Immigration Report http://bit.ly/9iR77X. According to the report “newly-released figures from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) show that during the first nine months of FY 2010, more non-US citizens were removed from the country than during any similar period in the Bush Administration.” The report also shows that the “sharp increases in ICE detention and removal of non-U.S. citizens had been accomplished largely by catching noncitizens who had not committed any crimes in this country but who had either crossed the border illegally or had overstayed their visas.” TRAC also reports a current shift in targeting to noncitizens who have committed crimes in this country. ICE “has already broken all previous records, and climbed to an all-time high,” according to TRAC. In fact, under Obama, the removal pace of criminal aliens is 60% higher than under the last year of the Bush administration.
To be sure, I have serious questions about whether ICE is actually engaging in smart enforcement. Who is really being removed? Is ICE really focusing on terrorists, violent criminals, and drug dealers? Or are they continuing to inflate the statistics by removing unfortunate folks that somehow got caught in the web of America’s dysfunctional immigration system? And, like many others, I am also eagerly awaiting signs of significant improvements in the dysfunctional ICE detention apparatus which has claimed the lives of 113 immigrants since 2003.
Yet, to brazenly claim that Obama is soft on immigration enforcement is pure demagoguery. But I guess speaking the truth takes “cojones.”
