Harris County Releases Illegal Immigrants
According to a story by the Associated Press, thousands of illegal immigrants were released from Houston jails this past week.
Many of these people were charged with minor charges, but 177 of the inmates were arrested for felony assault charges, rape, child molestation, and homicide charges. While the percentage of those committing major felonies is small, the fact that the felonies were committed at all is a travesty. Over 3,500 of the inmates released told jailers they were in the United States illegally.
The reason these criminals were released was because ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) did not file the paperwork to detain, prosecute, and deport the criminals.
While many of us will disagree on the the immigration debate, we must all look out for the welfare of our citizens. Most of the immigrants who come to the United States are here to seek jobs and to pursue the American Dream. There are others who come here and commit heinous crimes against American citizens. These heinous crimes cannot be tolerated.
When dangerous felons are released from prison due to the inability of the prosecutor to file the necessary paperwork, we have a problem. How many more lives will be affected by these dangerous criminals who are in our country illegally before we begin to seriously address the illegal immigration problem? How many repeat assaults will we tolerate before ICE deports these criminals?
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2 comments:
GOP has to walk a fine line here. We definitely can't and should not tolerate those who commit crimes against our citizens. And illegal immigration is still illegal, regardless of whether you call it unauthorized immigration, undocumented immigration, blah blah blah. But we have to keep under control that element of our party which is unreasonable about the immigration debate. I believe they are part of the reason that McCain received only 31% of the hispanic vote, down from Bush's 44% four years ago. Hispanics are generally conservative and we need their votes and should be able to win them as long as we don't have the extremely vocal elements within our party turning them off. Ronald Reagan once said "Latinos are Republican, they just don't know it yet." I hope we can prove him right.
Lonestarlizard, I agree with the sentiment that we need to reach out and have a welcoming face to hispanic voters and citizens.
... but NOBODY should be happy that deportable criminals are thrown back into the community. That is a pure and simple safety and law & order issues.
McCain was a pro-amnesty candidate who did his share of 'his-pandering'. I think that alone should make one question the simplistic view that immigration is what was driving hispanics to Dems vs. 2004. That wasnt it. lots more to it (consider the minority vote factor from this view - Obamanos!
And you cannot 'keep under control' one part of the big tent, you have to accomodate all views and build consensus - amnesty was never consensus! ... You lose hispanic *and* conservative votes (as McCain did!!) trying to 'tell the bigots to shut up' as Lindsay Graham so rudely and wrongly put it.
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