ICE arrested undocumented adults who sought to take in immigrant children
By Tal Kopan
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has arrested 170 undocumented immigrants who came forward to try to take migrant children out of government custody, including more than 100 with no criminal record, federal officials said Monday.
The new totals were released as the number of undocumented immigrant children in government custody has reached record highs, with no signs of slowing down.
According to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman, the agency arrested 170 immigrants from July through November on the basis of information the government learned about them when they applied to take an immigrant child out of custody. Of that group, nearly two-thirds, or 109, had no criminal record.
ICE had confirmed 41 such arrests in September, prompting Democrats to propose legislation to block the practice. California Sen. Kamala Harris has joined onto a bill in the Senate, which has a bipartisan House counterpart, that would bar ICE from arresting an adult seeking to take in a child on the basis of information uncovered in a background check.
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Golly gee, and some folks wonder why the “Abolish ICE” Movement continues to gather steam! Yes, ICE performs important law enforcement functions. But, lots of their “mission” isn’t really essential to good law enforcement, and some is actually quite counterproductive and wasteful.
Clearly, there is a case for Congress at least re-examining the amount of funding, priority, and effectiveness of some of which ICE is doing on the “civil side” these days. And, what would be the purpose of jamming more folks into a court system already crumbling under a largely artificially created 1.1 million case backlog? Not much that I can see, unless these folks being “lured” are really “bad actors,” which the majority of them don’t seem to be.
PWS
12-10-18