Thursday, October 27, 2011

Napolitano defends border enforcement

But security chief's claims of success rebuked by GOP at hearing.
  • Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano testifies  before the House Judiciary Committee on immigration and Southwest border issues. Photo: Haraz N. Ghanbari/Associated Press / SA
    Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano testifies before the House Judiciary Committee on immigration and Southwest border issues.
    Photo: Haraz N. Ghanbari/Associated Press / SA 
     
     


WASHINGTON — Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano defended the Obama administration against Republican attacks on lax enforcement of immigration laws, border security and a gun smuggling scandal during a contentious hearing Wednesday.

Napolitano said apprehensions of undocumented immigrants along the Southwest border dropped 36 percent in two years and violent crimes in border counties have decreased 30 percent.

She also said the U.S. deported 397,000 illegal immigrants charged with crimes last year, the highest amount in Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency history.

But those accomplishments came under sharp attack from Rep. Lamar Smith, chairman of the committee, who in a feisty verbal exchange said the Obama administration's lax worksite enforcement and failure to deport all apprehended illegal immigrants denied jobs to unemployed American workers.

Smith said ICE agents were being instructed not to remove most illegal workers found in the United States.
“These illegal immigrants can simply walk down the street, knock on the door of another employer and take another job away from an unemployed American worker,” Smith said.

Smith also challenged security on the border, citing a recent Government Accountability Office study that showed only 44 percent of the U.S.-Mexico border is under operational control by federal agencies.

Napolitano said the Obama administration has sent historic levels of equipment and manpower to provide border security.

A second drone will arrive in Corpus Christi this week, providing surveillance from three unmanned aerial vehicles, based in Texas and Arizona, from flights over the Rio Grande.

“For the first time, we now have Predator unmanned aircraft system coverage along the Southwest border from the California-Arizona to the Texas Gulf Coast,” Napolitano said.

On illegal immigration, Napolitano said DHS policies on detention and deportation of illegal immigrants were described, simultaneously by the political left and right, as mean-spirited and as an amnesty.

“These opposing views are both incorrect, and it's my hope that moving forward, we can have a civil and fact-based dialogue about immigration enforcement,” she said.

Napolitano said the lack of resources has forced federal agencies to first deport violent criminals, not those found here illegally and charged with non-violent crimes.

But Smith called the DHS deportation numbers deceiving, because many of the deportations are illegal immigrants apprehended and returned across the border multiple times, he said.

He said DHS has failed to provide specific information about illegal immigrants held on criminal charges, their names and crimes, and whether some were later released back into communities.

He vowed to issue a subpoena for the information if DHS does not give him the information by next week.

Napolitano also was grilled by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who asked why DHS failed to immediately investigate a gun smuggling operation now known as “Fast and Furious” after a Border Patrol agent was killed in Arizona last December with a gun smuggled across the border through the controversial program.

Napolitano said DHS initially did not probe the allegations that smuggled weapons were used to kill the agent because the Justice Department Office of the Inspector General was investigating.

Issa, who is leading a separate House Oversight and Government Reform Committee investigation into Fast and Furious, said he found it incredulous that Napolitano would wait to investigate.

“Wait just a minute,” Napolitano snapped. “That insinuation is not accurate.”

Napolitano said everyone should be outraged at the death of a Border Patrol agent.

“I think the first thing is recognize who actually killed him and that our number one priority was to make sure the shooters were found,” said Napolitano, who added that DHS worked with the FBI immediately following the shooting.

Smith has scheduled a separate Judiciary Committee hearing into Fast and Furious on Dec. 8 when Attorney General Eric Holder is scheduled to testify.

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