Yesterday we learned that some people are crossing the border from Mexico and gaining “temporary asylum” by claiming they are frightened of the drug cartels (can’t really blame them as Eric Holder has given them advanced weapons). By the time these people are required to state their case to see if they truly qualify for asylum, they have long-since disappeared and don’t bother to show up at their hearings.
Today we are learning all the in which ways this policy is hitting us in the pocketbook.
Fox News is reporting that this sudden influx of illegal immigrants from Mexico requesting asylum is overwhelming immigration the ICE agents in San Diego, forcing agencies to rent hotel rooms for some illegal families and/or release others to cities across the country.
That’s not all, some ICE employees are working overtime and others have been asked to volunteer to work weekend shifts. “Duties include intake, placements, transports and release of family groups and unaccompanied minors,” according to the memo.
In other words, it’s costing the taxpayer more money.
“This clearly has to have been orchestrated by somebody,” said former U.S. Attorney for Southern California Peter Nunez. “It’s beyond belief that dozens or hundreds or thousands of people would simultaneously decide that they should go to the U.S. and make this claim.”
Sources say one day last week, 200 border-crossers came through the Otay Mesa Port of Entry claiming asylum while and as many as 550 overflowed inside the processing center there and in nearby San Ysidro.
“People were sleeping on floors – they had nowhere to put them,” said one source, a long-time border agent and supervisor. “This shouldn’t be happening. Unless there is an immediate and well-publicized policy change, this situation will become another debacle.”
At a hotel near San Diego — which Fox News agreed not to identify for security reasons — ICE vans arrived several times over the weekend with immigrant families. They were escorted to the second floor by two armed, uniformed agents. Two border agents secured the entrance and side door.
Documents obtained by Fox News show that recently on a single day, dozens of illegal immigrants were being transferred to an area hotel where rooms cost $99 a night. Others were released to addresses in Texas, Florida and even Brooklyn, N.Y.
According to ICE they addresses given are usually bogus, and when these individuals don’t show up for court, an immigration judge in deports them in absentia (a lot of good that does).
Asylum claims from Mexico are highly unusual and critics say this is an orchestrated sham – it’s not about getting asylum, they say, but about overwhelming the system and getting a free pass into the U.S. and a court date for which no one will show up.
“Hundreds of thousands of people have never returned and the list of people for whom warrants are outstanding is phenomenal,” said Nunez. “We have a long history of people absconding from immigration hearings of one sort of another, they just blend back into the community.”
ICE sources say an estimated 600,000 to 800,000 illegal immigrants a year do not show up for their court date and disappear into the U.S.
Another way people are getting into the country is via the President’s DREAM Act by executive fiat.
Last week, an asylum officer heard the claims of the “Dream 9,” nine Mexican nationals brought to the U.S. as children. Even though seven of the nine lived, worked and went to school in Mexico without incident, they were granted asylum. Most thought they would be deported.
“The orders from Washington are to simply turn these people loose,” said Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform. “All you have to say is you qualify for the Dream Act and/or you intend to apply, and they’re instructed by their higher-ups to simply turn these people loose, to set them free and let them pursue any path they want.”
Obviously this increase in asylum requests/illegal entry into the country has much more to do with the Senate/and possibly House’s amnesty bills.
Can we really expect that an administration that allows people to slide through the border with questionable amnesty requests to enforce the loose border protection provisions of a comprehensive immigration bill? This is why a border protection bill must be passed and executed before any other immigration provisions can occur, or else the border will never be protected.
