Array
Four U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials told the this week that the agency has “drafted plans to release thousands of [illegal] immigrants” to cover a $700 million budget shortfall that the now-dead Senate deal was supposed to cover. Arguably worse, ICE also threatened to “slash its capacity to hold detainees.” It’s an upgraded version of the existing catch-and-release system but without the catch part — so much easier, don’t you think?
“The bill’s demise has led ICE officials to begin circulating an internal proposal to save money by releasing thousands of detainees and cutting detention levels from 38,000 beds to 22,000,” the Post reported on Wednesday. “The opposite of the enforcement increases Republicans say they want.”
Let’s call this threat what it really is: political blackmail. “Give the Democrats what they want,” ICE said in effect, “or we’ll unleash even more illegals on you.” And what the Democrats want, I don’t need to remind you, is more illegal aliens.
The Post story also said that according to ICE, a “$700 million deficit is the largest projected shortfall the agency has faced in recent memory.
