Under the Laken Riley Act, the government is supposed to focus on deporting criminal illegal aliens. But instead, useful people, such as immigrant doctors, are being swept up in the “mass deportation” push, notes Dr. Jeffrey Singer. Singer cites the example of an Iranian immigrant doctor (most Iranians hate Iran’s oppressive government, and some of them seek to leave Iran):
The Health Resources and Services Administration projects a shortage of 87,150 full-time equivalent primary care physicians by 2037… several states have revised their medical licensing laws to let residents benefit from the skills and experience of immigrant physicians who trained and practiced abroad…These reforms will not eliminate the shortage, but they will definitely help people, especially those in rural and underserved areas, get better access to care. That is, if Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) doesn’t stand in the way.
A video shows masked ICE agents stopping an immigrant doctor in his car on the way to drop off his child at a day care center in a Portland, OR, suburb. He provided identification to the ICE agents, who grew impatient when he asked them to “wait for three minutes” for his wife to arrive and take the baby from the car. With the baby out of the vehicle, the agents smashed the car’s windows, pulled the man out, and arrested him. Witnesses described the ICE agents as “heartless” and “unnecessarily violent and inhumane.”
Press reports identify the man as Mahdi Khanbabazadeh, an Iranian. He is married to a US citizen and works as a chiropractic physician. He came to the US on a student visa, which ICE later claimed he overstayed, and he has already applied and been interviewed for a Green Card….Dr. Khanbabazadeh apparently received his chiropractic education and training in the US. Therefore, he would not face the same barriers to entering practice as immigrant doctors who trained and practiced abroad. Meanwhile, the patients Dr. K cares for will be disappointed to learn that their doctor is currently being held at the Northwest ICE Processing Center… separated from his wife and child.
The Trump administration seems to be maximizing the number of migrants it rounds up, rather than focusing on criminals, who may be harder to catch than the typical migrant. That is a bad idea, and in tension with the Laken Riley Act. One violent criminal who preys on our citizens does more harm to America than hundreds of non-violent migrants who overstay their visa (when someone overstays their visa, that is a civil violation, not a crime covered by the Laken Riley Act).
As the Cato Institute’s David Bier notes,
Immigrants who had already racked up a series of arrests were accused of shooting an off-duty customs agent. These are exactly the people the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is required to prioritize under the Laken Riley Act. Yet DHS failed to do so….The Laken Riley Act is clear: The Department of Homeland Security “shall effectively and expeditiously take custody” of any illegal immigrant arrested for burglary, theft, or any crime that seriously injures anyone. This weekend’s suspects already had arrests for robbery, grand larceny and serious assaults.
They should have been among the first targets for the new administration, but they were not. As a result, they were free to re-offend.
Incredibly, this is the second time in six months that a DHS employee was a victim of a crime alleged to have been committed by a person whom DHS should have arrested under the Laken Riley Act. In April, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s purse was allegedly stolen by an undocumented immigrant in Washington, D.C., according to law enforcement. He, too, had previous arrests for theft in New York City, including this year during the Trump administration….
The New York Post quoted ICE officials last month saying the White House wants “quantity over quality,” which, the officials claim, is “leading them to leave some dangerous criminal illegal migrants on the streets.”
