Illegal and Fancy-Free

Here we go again.

Faced with a deluge of illegal crossers and the burden prosecuting them places on the courts, the U.S. Attorney's office has drawn up new rules that dramatically limit who will be prosecuted and who will merely be sent back to Mexico.

This is a joke. So what we have is a situation where our government limits the number of illegal aliens--many of whom are repeat offense felons--who will be prosecuted for crimes. But deporting them isn't so bad, right? I mean, at least it gets them out of our hair, right? Well, only if we secure the border. Otherwise, what stops these same people from coming right back in and continuing their crime sprees where they left off?

"(The) number of alien smuggling cases presented to our office has increased significantly over the last year," Steven Peak, an assistant U.S. attorney, wrote Paul Blocker Jr., the Border Patrol's acting San Diego sector chief. "Alien smuggling cases are manpower-intensive and often difficult to prosecute successfully."

Many of the illegal immigrants with criminal histories his office deals with, wrote Peak, had committed their earlier crimes outside of Southern California or had not been arrested in 10 or more years.

The new guidelines, Peak has informed the Border Patrol, will "scrutinize more closely the immigration and criminal history" of suspects.

But unhappy Border Patrol agents have told San Diego's KGTV News the increased scrutiny means only those "convicted of murder, manslaughter, kidnapping, rape or multiple felonies in the past five years. If they have committed a crime longer than seven years ago, it will not be considered – that includes crimes like child pornography, weapons crimes or terrorism."

The new policy will mean releasing potentially violent illegal immigrants back into Mexico, say the agents who note "we will be facing them the next night."

Can you believe this? We supposedly are in a "War on Terror." If we go by what our government daily pounds into our heads, "terror" is the worst enemy we've seen in the last fifty years. But we will not prosecute illegal aliens--even if they have been convicted of terrorism in the past--unless such a conviction happened less than seven years ago.

Border Patrol spokesman, Sean Isham, said the agency was working closely with the Justice Department and emphasizes that the new guidelines are still only proposals.

But Shawn Moran, a representative of the union for San Diego area Border Patrol agents, sees it differently. "We're not happy about it," he said. "It pretty much just raises the bar on the threshold for prosecution."

If you want to keep your finger on the pulse of these matters, pay close attention to how the Border Patrol views them. I see a trend of new, wishy-washy policies, concern or even outrage from the Border Patrol, and a curt dismissal of their concerns by the government. Those who guard our borders are the closest to this problem. They are affected most tangibly, on a day-to-day basis. They are in the best position for viewing and experiencing the inherent flaws in the system. And yet our "leaders" ignore them.

They deserve better.