Southern California Enforcement Sweep Nets 244 Criminal Aliens in Four Days

The recent four-day sweep in Southern California shows the importance of immigration law enforcement. Years ago, Immigration and Naturalization Service agents routinely patrolled the interior of the United States, often detaining aliens, but through their mere presence always sending the message that they were out there and ready to do their jobs. Under President Obama, enforcement is next to nonexistent, and raids nearly unheard of.
 

ICE sweep of criminal aliens is encouraging, but Obama blocks meaningful enforcement.

 
In late August, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, led by the agency’s National Fugitive Operations Program (NFOP), took 244 foreign nationals living in and around Los Angeles into custody. The majority had at least one felony conviction that included violent crimes, child sex offenses, weapons charges and drug-related offenses. Others had “significant or multiple misdemeanors.” Most are from Mexico but some from as far away as Ghana and Peru. No matter how far away would-be illegal immigrants live, they aren’t afraid to come to the U.S.
 
The multiple arrests prove that despite insistence from advocates and Obama that more immigration benefits the U.S., too many criminals enter and freely mingle in the general population. The Obama administration misleadingly refers to them as low-priority illegal immigrants.
 
ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice summed up the problem that Obama has left citizens to defend themselves against. Kice said that state and local law enforcement have released potentially deportable aliens instead of turning them over to ICE. Although Kice didn’t mention names, she was referring to Gov. Jerry Brown, his Trust Act and California’s sanctuary cities.
 
Before Americans in general and Californians specifically get too excited about this rare enforcement incident, consider this statistic. NFOP reported that in FY 2012, it arrested 37,000 removable criminal aliens. But in 2013, under orders from Obama, ICE freed 36,000 criminal aliens whose deportation cases were pending.
 
In other words, over a two-year period, a net 1,000 criminal aliens were taken into ICE custody, a truly pathetic, revolving door system that keeps putting Americans at risk.