Obama Orders ICE Agents to Break Federal Immigration Laws

Obama Orders ICE Agents to Break Federal Immigration Laws to Help Protect Non-Criminal Illegal Aliens from Deportations, but ICE Union Refuses to Follow:

The union that represents ICE immigration agents flatly told the White House, they cannot and will not implement his amnesty policies regarding illegal immigrants.

President Obama had initiated new policies for ICE to follow, on how they were to respond with future undocumented aliens, by going after the criminals, and let others slide by.

In other words, as the ICE union leadership says, President Obama wants them to break Federal laws, to ignore none-criminal illegal aliens, to keep them here instead of removing them.

The new training guidelines recently handed down from the White House, asking them to make nuanced, informed picks on illegal immigrants they arrest. Deport only the high risk offenders, but quit deporting none criminal illegal aliens, those with clean records and who have ties to this country.

The union representing some 7,000 of ICE agents, Immigration Custom Enforcement refuses to comply with those policies, and in essence, it’s allowing people to break federal laws while their agents are looking the other way.

Chris Crane the president of the union, the National ICE Council, has fiercely criticized the policy, saying ICE agents not to enforce the law. He accused Obama that he is doing it to fervor political deals with the Latino community, for his re-election campaign.

ICE union will not allow the White House to clearly violate Federal laws to protect illegal immigrants, who have no legal right being in this country. Without the union support, Obama policies could take months, and even through labor negotiations.

Mr. Crane has been channeling his complaints with Republican leaders in congress, working with Rep. Lamar Smith, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, calling the plan as a presidential backdoor amnesty, circumventing the powers of congress.

Mr. Crane provided congressmen with proof, showing the president’s intentions in breaking U.S. laws, to favor illegal immigrants.

On another side, the administration is facing intense pressure from Latino leaders and immigrant organizations to begin halting deportations.

"The cornerstone of the policy is a June 17 memorandum by John Morton, the director of ICE, in which he laid out a list of no fewer than 31 factors that ICE officers should weigh when deciding whether to proceed with a deportation. Peter S. Vincent, ICE’s top lawyer, added further guidelines on Nov. 17.
With slide shows and chalk talks on a dozen hypothetical immigration cases, the training seminar challenges officers to decide which foreigners should be deported, using prosecutorial discretion to make more complex decisions than they have in decades.

It instructs agents to focus on the worst offenders, including criminal convicts, gang members and foreigners who came back after being expelled. Other groups of immigrants — elderly people, children, military veterans, college students and parents of young citizens — are low priorities who can be allowed to stay, even if they are here illegally. A New York Times reporter sat through an abbreviated version of the seminar.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the policy was based on existing statutes and was intended to make good use of strained resources. With each deportation costing at least $23,000, she said, immigration agencies have money for 400,000 removals each year, a goal that the Obama administration has met in each of the past three years.

But an estimated 11 million immigrants live here illegally.
The training asks ICE agents what they should do, for example, with a young illegal immigrant turned over to the agency after being arrested by a state trooper for driving without a license. She has been living in this country since 1993 and has an infant son, an American citizen because he was born here. But she lied to ICE officers, failing to tell them she had a conviction for shoplifting in 1995.

Answer: She is not a threatening criminal and may still be nursing her American baby. Officers should close her deportation case.

How about the migrant who has been living here since he crossed the Southwest border illegally in 1996? He failed to appear for a crucial immigration court hearing back then. But he has no criminal record, and he coaches soccer at the school where his twin daughters, both citizens, are enrolled.

Answer: This case, too, should be closed.
Then there is the man from an Asian Pacific island, a legal resident of the United States since 1984 who even served two distinguished combat tours in Iraq. But he left the military and is now finishing a six-year prison sentence for a federal sex-trafficking felony.

Answer: Despite his service, because of his grave sex offense he loses his resident status and will be sent by ICE to his birth country.

Cases against illegal immigrants who win favorable prosecutorial discretion will be closed but not canceled, so ICE can easily reopen them. Mr. Morton said the immigrants would remain in “legal limbo,” not gaining any legal immigration status.

Mr. Crane told Congress that the Morton directives presented enforcement agents with “a roller coaster of arrest authority that has changed from month to month, week to week and at times from day to day.” He said some agents were afraid to make any arrests.

It is not clear how deeply the union’s resistance reaches into ICE ranks. ICE officials say many field agents have been drawn to the professional appeal of the high-profile anticrime operations against foreign street gangs, drug dealers and sex offenders that the agency is conducting ever more frequently.

“Our folks understand that we have limited resources and we have to focus more than ever on our priorities,” said Chris Shanahan, the ICE field office director who oversees deportation operations in New York City, where all supervisors have had the training."