Prosecutorial Deception: The $21 Billion DHS Betrayal

On June 17, 2015, the House Subcommittee on National Security and the Subcommittee on Health Care, Benefits and Administrative Rules, conducted a joint oversight hearing concerning “A Review of the President’s Executive Actions on Immigration.”

IG John Roth of DHS.

DHS Inspector General (IG) John Roth testified at this hearing along with the directors of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services). Those agencies, as well as CBP (Customs and Border Protection), all operate under the aegis of DHS (The Department of Homeland Security).

Roth’s prepared testimony disclosed his concerns about how the administration has “addressed” the immigration crisis in the United States – by implementing executive orders to inhibit immigration enforcement personnel from doing their jobs. He noted that for each of the past two fiscal years, ICE, CBP and USCIS, collectively, received approximately $21 billion. The obvious question is: “What we are getting for that huge expenditure of money?”

Roth’s testimony revealed what we are not getting for that huge sum of hard-earned taxpayers’ money: Effective immigration law enforcement and accountability.

Here is an excerpt from the IG’s testimony about the impact of the administration’s executive orders on a number of critical issues that have potentially undermined national security and public safety and have failed to free up jobs held by illegal aliens that should be held by lawful immigrants and Americans (I used boldface type to emphasize key statements):

DHS also does not collect other prosecutorial discretion-related data that might help immigration efforts. For example, DHS would benefit from capturing information regarding aliens who are granted prosecutorial discretion and later commit a crime or pose a threat to national security and public safety.

In addition to assisting in the overall policy-making process, capturing the right information would allow the Department to ensure the proper and evenhanded application of the policies that do exist. As it stands now, there is no mechanism by which to assess the reasonableness of an individual officer’s similarly situated aliens, or to compare the use of prosecutorial discretion by various field offices. This data, if collected, could also be used to evaluate the performance of individual officers or field offices.

Uneven or inconsistent policy enforcement can have a negative effect on DHS’ immigration enforcement mission. For example, in February 2013 we published an audit report examining ICE’s worksite enforcement strategy, and found that headquarters did not adequately oversee the field offices to ensure that they were consistent in issuing warnings and fines, and some field offices issued significantly more warnings than fines. The directorate also negotiated fines with employers, in some cases substantially reducing the amounts. Homeland Security Investigations’ inconsistent implementation of the administrative inspection process, plus the reduction of fines, may have hindered its mission to prevent or deter employers from violating immigration laws.

On June 24, 2015, FrontPage Magazine published my article, “Obama’s Actions on Immigration Lack Accountability – An Inspector General’s warning about Obama’s amnesty insanity,” that provides more details about the administration’s policies and lack of accountability.

The obvious reason that the administration has refused to accumulate and provide the vital information, as noted in the IG’s testimony, parallels the reason that individuals who are being questioned under oath refuse to answer questions and invoke their Fifth Amendment rights – they know their answers would likely incriminate them.