Let us deal with facts and not fantasy. When ICE receives 5,000 requests from police agencies across the nation to pick up and deport suspected illegal aliens and they only have suffieicent staff to pick up 2,000 of these cases - do you really want evey case treated equally? Do you want ICE to process the first 2,000 requests, regardless of the fact that request number 2001 is to pick up a convicted drug dealer or murderer?
I know: you want enough ICE personnel to pick up every single person accused of being in the country illegally. Even the 67 year old lady who is from England and overstayed her visa by 2-days needs to be deported. Right. Well, a police officer on every corner would also be nice. So would radar cameras on every street so that everyone driving even 1-mile over the limit would pay. (Thing of the huge reduction of accidents, injuries and death!)
In the real world, we want freedom and we don't want every technical violation to result in an arrest or even a fine. In the real world there are not enough ICE agents to arrest every person in violation of immigration rules.
Only a few years ago the official policy of the Border Patrol was to deport Mexicans and to issue citations to illegals that were not from Mexico. (See: you should educate yourself about the facts). The policy was known as OTM (other than Mexican). Radio stations in Latin America acutally told listeners that if they are 'going north' and stopped by the Border Patrol to declare that they are from any country except Mexico and that they will only be issued a ticket that orders them to appear before a judge.
Many listeners telephoned the radio station because they were certain this was a joke. However, once in the United States the listeners found that the joke got even funnier. The citation process included being detained while a computer check was made to make certain that they were not on a watch list, wanted or from a country that was on a watch list (i.e. Iran). This was a bit inconvenient but here is the punch-line. Once issed a citation and set free, the citation served as a sort of protection from other federal agents. If they were ever stopped again, the immigrants learned that they could hand the agent their previous citation and the agent would immediately let them go about their business and not detain them for another background check.
How does such a ridiculous policy get in place? Constant reports from the media, blogs, etc. pushed the agency to do something about 'all these Mexicans' and there are simply not enouth resources to process everyone in the United States without the proper papers.
Today, the cry is to round them all up. So while we spend limited resources to process the little old lady from England who overstayed her visa, we do not focus on the drug dealers because we only have a certain number of agents.
In fact, the screaming about 'more arrests' led to the policy of checking immigration status of people leaving the United States. This is purly a numbers game that is forced on the officers at the border. They would prefer focusing on dope dealers coming into the country, but instead they question Mexicans leaving the United States.
I see this at several U.S. Border Crossings into Mexico. A man is walking across the International Bridge and is stopped by the four ICE Officers working this check-point. He is patted down and asked about his citizenship. The man explains he is going back to Mexico and was in the United States without papers, looking for work. He is arrested, processed and then volunteers to return home. A complete waste of time and a waste of the limited resources and the sole purpose is to increase the number of illegal aliens being arrested.
While this nonsense is going on, the overworked and understaffed officers assigned to check people entering the United States can't possible search as many vehicles as they could with the staff that is required to waste their time checking immigration status of those leaving the U.S.
A valid reason to stop people leaving the United States and returning to Mexico is to stem the flow of illegal cash and weapons that are shipped to Mexico for the cartels. This effort I applaud, even as my own vehicle is searched. However, this would not require the arrest of every illegal immigrant that is simply leaving. I would really prefer that the ICE report their arrest statistics with a breakdown that shows the number of felons, people in direct possession of narcotics, people and organizations smuggling people, and the number of people leaving the United States. Perhaps we the people would then demand a proper use of resources.
Instead, in response to the public outcry, we just grab whatever we can and pretend we are all safer.
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