A Congressional hearing uncovered at least 179,000 “undocumented criminals with final orders of removal” are roaming the streets of the United States and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency is doing less than ever to get them off the streets and out of the country.
Sarah Saldana, ICE’s director, disclosed to Congress on Wednesday that the agency is apprehending and removing fewer illegal immigrants than in past years.
Somewhere around 179,029 “undocumented criminals with final orders of removal” from the United States currently remain at large across the country and are essentially untraceable, according to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who disclosed these numbers during a Wednesday hearing.
The total number of criminal illegal aliens in the United States is in the millions.
Illegal immigrant criminals are known to be committing new crimes “every day,” according to Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.), another member of the committee.
Not only are efforts to find and deport dangerous criminals lagging, but more and more are being cut loose thanks to bureaucratic inertia.
Saldana revealed at the hearing that somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000 illegal immigrants previously convicted of crimes have been released from custody in recent years due to legal restrictions on how long the agency can detain an individual.
“Whether it’s a result of protracted appeals or refusal of a country to accept its nationals back, this decision accounts for somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000 convicted criminal alien releases in recent years,” Saldana said, noting that the number has dropped over time.
Despite Obama’s continued promises to crack down on criminal illegal aliens
The Obama administration is removing fewer total illegal immigrants from the United States than it was just a few years ago, according to Sessions.
“Not only are total removals down, but the number of removals of criminal aliens from the interior of United States, the so-called priority, has decreased significantly,” he said. “The reason for this decrease is not because there are fewer criminal aliens in the U.S. today then just a few years ago, there are hundreds of thousands of known criminal aliens in the U.S.”
ICE’s batting average for doing its most important job is pretty low
“Last year ICE managed to deport just over 63,000 criminal aliens from the interior out of an estimated criminal alien population of over 2 million,” Vaughan said.
