Updated 3/29/2009 10:07 PM ET
By Brad Heath, USA TODAY
hat tip to TPM Muckraker
...WASHINGTON — The nation's immigration courts are now so clogged that nearly 90,000 people accused of being in the United States illegally waited at least two years for a judge to decide whether they must leave, one of the last bottlenecks in a push to more strictly enforce immigration laws....
...In the most extreme cases, immigrants can remain locked up while their cases are delayed. More often, the backlogs leave them struggling to exist until they learn their fate, Marks and others say....
...Five-year delays were most common in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York, but were far less common around busy border crossings such as San Diego and Tucson, according to the dockets...
Gee, I wonder if it is faster in San Diego and Tuscon because all the border patrol can do is take them to the border where they promptly climb over the wall again, or pay a drug dealer/coyote for the privilege of tromping through the desert with a backpack full of drugs.
Oh look, we made the right wing rag TIME magazine
Watching for Immigrants Off California's Coast
By Dan Simmons Thursday, Mar. 26, 2009
As dawn breaks, U.S. customs agents end their night patrol off the California coast.
...The landings are part of a recent spike in illegal immigration by sea to the San Diego area. In the past five months, federal agents with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have intercepted 14 boats and made 122 arrests. This year they are on pace to double their record arrest total for 2008...
Delay in Immigration Raids May Signal Policy Change
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 29, 2009; Page A02
Immigrations and Customs Enforcement may be shifting focus from detaining illegal workers to prosecuting executives at the companies that employ them. A senior government official says raids are being delayed.
Immigrations and Customs Enforcement may be shifting focus from detaining illegal workers to prosecuting executives at the companies that employ them. A senior government official says raids are being delayed. (By Matt Bush -- Associated Press)
Yeah sure, I'll believe it when I see it. They're going to target the employers? Suuuuuuuurre they are.
Carol Lam was doing a better job of prosecuting the worst of the criminal element of the illegal population here, and remember what the Bush Rethugs did to her? They forced her resignation for political reasons.
However, the Justice Department itself defended Lam in an August 23, 2006 letter to Senator Feinstein. They asserted:
The immigration philosophy of the Southern District focuses on deterrence by directing its resources and efforts against the worst immigration offenders and by bringing felony cases against such defendants that will result in longer sentences. For example, although the number of defendants who received prison sentences between 1-12 months fell from 896 in 2004 to 338 in 2005, the number of immigration defendants who received sentences longer than 60 months rose from 21 to 77. Prosecutions for alien smuggling in the Southern District under U.S.C. sec. 1324 are rising sharply in Fiscal Year 2006.[26]
Damnit, Joseph Wambaugh wrote the non-fiction book Lines and Shadows in 1984. It was about a police task force that tried to stop the criminals that preyed upon the illegals that crossed into the United States. When are we going to have real immigration reform that makes sense?
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