Obama, DHS lawlessness on immigration exposed by watchdogs

by Jim Kouri 

While President Barack Obama pushed hard on Tuesday for support of his immigration agenda and the proposed legislation by the so-called “gang of eight” U.S. senators, an “Inside the Beltway” watchdog group announced it obtained documents that revealed the Obama administration’s lawlessness in complying with current immigration enforcement laws and regulations.
The well-respected, public-interest group Judicial Watch reported on Tuesday that documents it acquired recently through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request revealed that the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) “abandoned required background checks in late 2012.”
Besides the Judicial Watch investigation, earlier this year, armed with “inside information,” 10 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents filed a federal lawsuit against the Obama administration seeking an end to President Obama’s new non-deportation policy derided as “Obama’s Dream Act Light” by opponents of his illegal immigration policies, according to the ICE agents’ union.
The ICE agents filed the lawsuit in federal court in one of the state’s most affected by the Obama policy – Texas. The agents allege that President Obama’s policies have reduced the number of illegal aliens who will be deported back to their country of origin, according to an analysis by Accuracy in Media, a news organization watchdog group. (Full disclosure: Jim Kouri is the author of the Accuracy in Media analysis.)

The ICE agents allege in their lawsuit that the Obama executive order causes a confusing situation in which they must choose between enforcing federal laws and being disciplined by their commanders, or obeying their supervisors thereby violating oaths of office and a Clinton administration law — passed by a bi-partisan Congress in 1996 — that mandates the deportation of illegal aliens.
According to Judicial Watch officials, the FOIA documents they obtained shows that the USCIS arbitrarily adopted “lean and lite” procedures in order expedite the enormous number of amnesty applications that were encouraged by President Obama’s executive order for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
Quite simply, DACA bestows to certain illegal aliens a two-year deferment from being detained and deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
According to Judicial Watch, the watchdog group obtained a tip from an anonymous member of a federal law enforcement agency. Based on that tip from the whistleblower, Judicial Watch submitted a FOIA request with the Homeland Security Department for “all communications, memoranda, emails, policy guidance, directives, initiatives and other correspondence respecting the scope and extent of background checks to be performed (or not) on aliens applying to the Obama administration’s DACA program.”
The Immigration and National Security Act (INA) mandates a “coordinated, uniform, and efficient,” system of background checks. Instead, the FOIA documents reveal a costly, haphazard process, with only cursory review for the backgrounds of illegal aliens seeking “deferred status.”

An important revelation is that DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano’s claim — that DACA applied only to minors who came to this country illegally “through no fault of their own” — was deceptive. Obama’s directive in fact put another “kink in the armor of border security” by creating situations in which immediate relatives of DACA requesters could be approved for amnesty.
“The Obama administration seems to be throwing public safety and national security out the door in implementing its illicit and unilateral amnesty program for illegal aliens. The costs and security lapses of this program show that this administration can’t be trusted to implement any of the new security measures in the amnesty bill in the Senate,” stated Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton.
“These documents show a crisis in law enforcement and national security caused by President Obama’s unilateral decision to grant amnesty to hundreds of thousands illegal aliens,” he added.

Page 1,318 of the Gang of Eight’s S. 744 markup bill details the establishment of a “photo tool” – a giant federal database managed by the Department of Homeland Security, supplied with individuals’ biometric information from all of the fifty states. Tell Congress: No Biometric Database, No National ID! Sign the petition.