ICE

During debate on the Department of Homeland Security’s appropriations bill, the House voted cut off funds for implementing Administration policies that shield most illegal aliens from the threat of deportation. The 224-201 vote on an amendment sponsored by Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) could be a harbinger of the difficulties amnesty proponents face in the coming debate over immigration reform [amnesty for illegal aliens].

  Read more about House Votes to Overturn Obama Administration No-Deportation Policies

These are hectic days for the federal deportation officer who has made it his single-minded mission to stop a bipartisan bill to overhaul the immigration system that is making its way through the Senate.

The officer, Chris Crane, heads the union of immigration enforcement agents. Obama administration officials become exasperated at the mere mention of his name.

Recently, Mr. Crane testified about the bill in the House Judiciary Committee, securing his record as the most frequent witness on Capitol Hill during this year’s immigration debate and the favorite expert of conservative critics of the Senate measure. Once again, his warnings were categorical and dire.

“Americans should understand that this legislation only guarantees legal status for illegal aliens, including serious criminals,” Mr. Crane said. “It contains no promise of solving our nation’s immigration problems.”...

his union, the National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council, represents 7,700 of 20,000 employees of the immigration agency known as ICE...

He says, in stark terms, that the Obama administration’s performance could not be worse.

“Across the board, we’re not doing law enforcement work,” Mr. Crane said in a recent interview in Salt Lake City, where he is based. “It’s very disturbing as an employee in general to see the Department of Homeland Security lie to the American people day in and day out about who we’re arresting.”...

More recently, his feud with top ICE officials is over a policy instructing deportation officers to exercise prosecutorial discretion, deporting criminals rather than immigrants whose only violation is being here illegally. Mr. Crane said many ICE agents found the policy, which was started two years ago, confusing and contrary to their mission. He waged a battle with ICE managers over when and how agents would be trained to carry it out.

“They are asking law enforcement officers to basically ignore their law books,” Mr. Crane said. “For officers out in the field, we can’t function like that. We have to have laws that are very clear, that aren’t ambiguous, that we can confidently go out into the street and enforce.”... Read more about Single-Minded Mission to Block an Immigration Bill

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) cannot find 266 potentially dangerous foreign nationals who have overstayed their visas, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

According to testimony from Rebecca Gambler, director of the Homeland Security and Justice for GAO, on May 21, 2013 before the House Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security, DHS identified 1,901 illegal overstays of concern in 2011. As of March 2013, 14 percent remain missing.

The 1,901 cases were reprioritized for further investigation by DHS “because the subjects of the records could pose national security or public safety concerns.”...

The report said 481 (25.3 percent) of the cases were given to Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) division, because they presented “potential public safety threats.” ERO is “responsible for identifying and apprehending aliens who are subject to removal from the country, detaining these individuals when necessary, and removing aliens subject to removal from the United States.”...

Visa overstays pose a significant national security risk, according to Gambler, since one-fourth of the terrorists who carried out 9/11 were in the country illegally, overstaying their visas...

The GAO testimony also revealed that there are currently more than 1 million “unmatched arrival records” in the DHS’s Arrival and Departure Information System (ADIS), or potential cases where immigrants have remained in the country with expired visas.

Furthermore, DHS has failed to report to Congress on visa overstays, as required by law, due to a lack of “confidence in the quality of its overstay data.” ... Read more about DHS Can’t Locate 266 Illegal Overstays that ‘Pose National Security’ Risks

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano does not have the authority to refuse to enforce laws that require illegal immigrants to face deportation, according to the federal judge hearing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement union’s lawsuit against DHS.

“The court finds that DHS does not have discretion to refuse to initiate removal proceedings [when the law requires it],” U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor said Wednesday, per Business Week. O’Connor asked DHS and the ICE union to offer additional arguments before he makes a final ruling on the legality of President Obama’s “deferred action on childhood arrivals” program, which invoked prosecutorial discretion as a means of allowing people to stay in the country if they would have qualified for amnesty under the Dream Act, which never passed Congress... Read more about Judge to Janet Napolitano: You have to deport illegal immigrants

ICE Union President Chris Crane has been critical of the Gang of Eight's intentional decision to ignore law enforcement while drafting its "comprehensive immigration reform" bill that would grant amnesty to most of the nation's 11-18 million illegal aliens .. Yesterday, he told the Senate Judiciary Committee about the Gang's refusal to talk with immigration enforcement agents.

"This legislation was crafted behind closed doors with big business, big unions, and groups representing illegal aliens," Crane testified. "Groups with their own interests. Groups that stand to make millions from this legislation. Anyone with a significantly different opinion on immigration reform was prohibited by the Gang of Eight from having input.

"Lawmaking in our nation has indeed taken a strange twist as Senators invite illegal aliens to testify before Congress and groups representing illegal aliens are brought into the development of our nation's laws, but America's citizens working as law enforcement officers within our nation's broken immigration system are purposely excluded from the process and prohibited from providing input."...

"Last week, desperate to be heard, border sheriffs, interior sheriffs, deputies and immigration agents all came to Washington, D.C. with the hope that the Gang of Eight would hear their concerns," Crane said. "They held two meetings on two separate days, not one member of the Gang of Eight attended.

"Last week when I respectfully asked a question to the Gang of Eight at their press conference, I was escorted out by police and Senate staff. I was spoken to with anger and disrespect.

"Never before have I seen such contempt for law enforcement officers as what I've seen from the Gang of Eight."

Watch Chris Crane's entire testimony below.

Read more about ICE Union President Tells Senate Committee Law Enforcement Locked Out of Negotiations

The union president for immigration officers blasted President Barack Obama as well as Congress’ Gang of Eight immigration proposal, saying the plan will “doom” the country on Friday.

“We’re just in shock right now that the law enforcement officers from the border control, from ICE, our prosecuting attorneys – people that are in the trenches right now and see exactly what’s wrong with our broken immigration system – don’t have a seat at the table and can’t have input,” Crane told former GOP Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee on Huckabee’s radio program.

Crane continued: “Quite honestly, I think it’s going to doom us to repeat all of the failures that we already currently have with the immigration system as it exists.”...

Crane criticized Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, whose agency oversees ICE, as well as the Obama administration.

“From day one since Janet Napolitano came in, she’s excluded us as law enforcement officers from the table,” Crane told Huckabee. “[…] Currently right now the administration is ignoring the laws as enacted by Congress. They are making up their own policies because they believe that the executive branch has the ability to dictate to the American people above and beyond what Congress has stated with regard to how immigration law is going to be enforced.”...

Fox News reported Friday that Crane’s National ICE Council wants Rubio to leave the Gang of Eight because... Read more about ICE union chief: Immigration plan to 'doom' U.S.

Ten U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are asking a federal judge to block an initiative by the Obama administration that defers deportation action against law-abiding undocumented immigrants.

  Read more about Immigration Agents Ask Judge to Block Obama Initiative

On April 3, 2013, Chris Crane hosted a media conference call to sound the alarm about immigration reform / legalization efforts that emphasize amnesty over enforcement. Crane stated:

Chris Crane is President of the National ICE Council representing 7,600 law Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agents, Officers and support staff. Chris Crane is an ICE officer and a former Marine.

U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL)  placed 21 minutes of the conference call on Youtube: Law Enforcement Conference Call On Gang Of 8. If the audio is unavailable from Youtube, you can download and listen to the audio here: Chris Crane media conference call on amnesty and enforcement (the audio is equalized for clarity but content is not altered or edited).

For more excerpts from Chris Crane's call, see ICE union hammers Gang of 8: Their plan is ‘legalization, or amnesty first, and then enforcement’. Read more about Law Enforcement Conference Call: Gang Of 8 Agreement Would Mean Legalization First, Enforcement Maybe Never

The head of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent union says that he has no confidence that the Obama administration would step up its border control efforts as part of any immigration reform agreement.

Chris Crane, ICE officer and National ICE Council president representing 7,000 ICE agents, officers, and employees, expressed concern in a statement issued Friday that the “the immigration bill being crafted behind closed doors” by the bipartisan “gang of eight” senators “will be rushed to passage without proper public consideration and proper input from the law enforcement community.”

According to Crane, while big businesses and advocacy groups have been given a seat at the table by the White House and at “other secret meetings,” the ICE union has been left out of the conversation.

He added that ICE’s “politically appointed leaders” — Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and ICE Director John Morton — “do not speak for us when it comes to enforcing the law” and that the pair have “repeatedly undermined the ability of our officers to enforce and protect the public safety.”

“A mass legalization, or amnesty, of millions of illegal aliens, combined with an increase in future immigration, will have profound consequences for every law enforcement officer in the country and especially those who enforce our nation’s immigration laws,” Crane said. “But we have been shut out of the process.”

“[G]iven the administration’s current enforcement record, I have zero confidence any promises of future enforcement will be fulfilled,” he added.... Read more about ICE union head on immigration reform: ‘Zero confidence any promises of future enforcement will be fulfilled’

America – For Sale: This is what happens when politicians sell American laws and values down the river for Democrat votes. Apparently there are thousands upon thousands of illegal aliens who didn’t get the Napolitano memo about how “secure” the border is. They just keep coming…and coming…and coming. Since we aren’t allowed to properly count those who escape arrest, she can keep lying to the American people in her never-ending quest to legalize millions of lawbreakers.

While demoralized Border Patrol agents try to figure out how to survive the Obama-Napolitano-Aguilar sponsored 40% pay cut that is coming next month, the media in Mexico has relayed to everyone that America has been put up for sale once again.

This is just one small example, but one Tucson sector station was hammered recently with a surge of illegal aliens. The holding cells were full and the overflow prisoners had to be detained in processing areas that aren’t designed to house prisoners. This is just the beginning. The good stuff is yet to come as the media relentlessly pounds on the fact that it’s a free-for-all.

One picture shows illegal aliens in an overcrowded holding cell. The next picture shows the overflow prisoners being housed in an un-secure processing area. And just wait until every illegal alien who comes across the border starts demanding a hearing because they want their amnesty. There will be no place to put them, and they can’t be sent home until they have their hearing, so do the math folks. This already happened when IRCA 1986 was implemented, and it should be lots more fun this time around with 4, 5 or 10 times the number of illegal aliens demanding their amnesty. Read more about America – For Sale