It was recently revealed that about 47,000 illegal aliens have been deported through a program under which the U.S. Department of Homeland Security checks the fingerprints of people booked in several hundred jails around the country.
The program was designed primarily with the goal of detecting illegal aliens who have committed the most serious crimes – such as those involving violence – after coming to the United States in violation of our laws. But some of those deported had been picked up for relatively less serious wrongdoing, such as traffic violations.
Advocates on behalf of illegal aliens are complaining that many of the deportees did not have a “criminal record” and that it was therefore somehow wrong to deport them. But that’s a nonsensical word game. They became criminals the moment they crossed our borders unlawfully, or stayed in this country beyond the time limit set by the visas that gave them temporary permission to visit.
Their own actions have made them subject to arrest and eventual deportation. There is certainly nothing controversial about that. It is, in fact, one of the few ways in which the usually lax federal enforcement of immigration law is actually working.
That effort should be praised and expanded, not undermined.