Bush Amnesty Plan Attracts New Illegals

housands of illegal aliens apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol are being released into the United States after being caught as part of a pro-immigration government policy to wink at immigration law violations and avoid offending Central and Latin American governments.

It's a policy that reveals how little government officials care for the safety and security of the American people.

"Several Central and South American governments have been reluctant to accept groups of people for repatriation," reported USA Today last month. "And the Department of Homeland Security . . . has a limited budget for renting detention cells at local jails.

"The result: With no place to put thousands of captured illegals from Central and South America, the Border Patrol has begun releasing them after giving them written orders to appear at deportation hearings in nearby U.S. cities," the paper said.

Even immigration officials and law enforcement authorities readily admit that nearly all illegals will never show up for their deportation hearings.

"Immigration officials acknowledge the exercise is futile. About 86 percent of those issued such notices never show up for court hearings," reported USA Today.

"In a procedure that has been ridiculed by local law enforcement officials and even some Border Patrol agents, the agents are told to make sure that illegal immigrants provide U.S. addresses and contact telephone numbers before they are released," the paper said. "But local law enforcement officials who have reviewed dozens of the notices say that many illegals provide false addresses or none at all. That leaves U.S. authorities with few clues about where to look for the illegals if they fail to appear in court.

Today, authorities are unable to locate more than 300,000 illegal aliens who have been ordered deported. The government has no idea where millions of other illegals are living.

Citizens in U.S. border towns are worried.

"Officials in U.S. border towns and other critics say the policy threatens local residents' safety and undermines security along the Southwestern border at a time when counterterrorism officials believe al-Qaeda operatives could be focusing on Mexico as an entry point to the USA," the paper said.

"The Border Patrol is admitting to me that don't have a clue about who these people really are or what kind of threat they might pose," said Wayne Jernigan, the sheriff in Val Verde County, Texas. "During these times when everybody's concerned about who's coming into this country, I think you have to question the wisdom of this policy."

The "catch and release" policy was put into effect many years ago in order to supply the corporate donors of politicians' political campaigns with plenty of cheap labor. But many Americans assumed their government would have corrected the policy in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks.

Not so. The policy remains the same despite the deadly threat from Third World terrorists.

David Venturella, assistant director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, admits the policy is not good enough to screen out dangerous enemies or even run-of-the-mill criminals. He said illegals are fingerprinted and their names checked against government lists of known criminals.

"Is that enough?" Venturella asked. "Probably not."

In January, the Border Patrol directed Sheriff Jernigan to take 76 detained illegal aliens from Central America to the Del Rio, Texas, bus station. They had been contained in the county jail, but the Border Patrol ran out of money to pay for their keep. At the bus station, the illegals "caught buses to continue their journeys to Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles," said USA Today.

"We didn't know who these people were or what their intentions were, said Dora Alcala, the mayor of Del Rio. "They were all released with these notices to appear [in court] at some date in the future. But do you honestly think there was any chance of that? I don't think so," he said.

Many illegals are barely detained after their capture.

There are so many illegal aliens streaming across the U.S.-Mexico border, and so few places to put them, that many captured illegals are in custody only a couple of hours before they are released into the U.S., said T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, a labor union representing border agents.

"Many agents are wondering if they really want to put their lives on the line, if we're just gonna let the illegals go," he said.

Sheriff Jernigan told USA Today he once questioned a group of illegals, one of whom he suspected of being a member of a violent gang in California. The men produced notices ordering them to appear at immigration hearings.

"But then Jernigan realized something else: The U.S. agents who had issued the notices did not include dates and times for the hearings. And the spaces where the illegal aliens were supposed to list U.S. addresses and telephone contacts were blank," reported USA Today.

So if the illegals had intended to appear at a hearing, they wouldn't have known when to appear. And if the authorities wanted to find the men, they wouldn't know where to start looking.

"It's a complete farce," said Jernigan. "It tells me that our doors are wide open for anyone to come in."