So what is the DHS and ICE going to do now?

 

So what is the DHS and ICE going to do now?

What do you mean you would have hoped the ‘Dream Act’, passed  to make your jobs easier to address clearly mapped and posted nation’s borders?
If your unsure of who’s borders and citizens you are protecting then why have DHS or ICE?


From the border perspective, passing something like this would in fact have a positive effect on our ability to address our nation’s borders,” said Customs and Border Patrol Deputy Commissioner David Aguilar. “It would support our efforts to focus on safety threats, smugglers and human traffickers.”
called the DREAM Act “a great force enhancer,” and said that contrary to DREAM Act opponents’ criticisms, the border was more secure than it had ever been.
“From our perspective the DREAM Act and its passage by the Senate is entirely consistent with this [enforcement policy] focusing limited resources of government on public safety, border security and the integrity of the system,” said John Morton, head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Morton said that ICE’s priority was to focus on “the removal of criminal offenders” and last year his agency had deported nearly a record 392,000 people, and an unprecedented number—195,000—who’d been convicted of criminal offenses. Yet the majority people who were deported had never been convicted of any crime before, and the majority of those who did have a criminal record had been convicted of minor infractions like traffic violations, or nonviolent drug offenses.
Criminal street gangs—mostly comprised of illegal immigrants—are responsible for the majority of violent crimes in the United States and are the primary distributors of most illicit drugs.  The alarming, but not surprising, information is revealed in a new report published by the Justice Department’s National Gang Intelligence Center (NGIC), an FBI task force created in 2005 to curb the growing threat of violent gangs in the U.S. The NGIC teams up with state and local law enforcement agencies throughout the nation to enforce, study and intercept gangs and has published several reports documenting their activities.
Before the agency’s publication was made public a national newspaper revealed some of its findings. It says that up to 80% of crime in the U.S. is committed by gangs and that gang membership in this country has grown to 1 million, an increase of 200,000 in the last few years.

Additionally, gangs are the “primary retail-level distributors of most illicit drugs” in the U.S. and several are sophisticated enough to compete with major Mexican drug-trafficking cartels. Most of the country’s state and local enforcement agencies have reported gang activity in their jurisdiction and the problem will only get worse, according to the FBI.
CRS Report For Congress Mexico’s Drug Cartels
In fact, a high-ranking FBI director said gangs have followed the migration paths of illegal alien laborers to avoid big-city police departments that have cracked down on their activities. An example is the notoriously violent Salvadoran gang known as Mara Salvatrucha or MS-13, which has spread throughout the U.S.—to at least 42 states—and continues expanding.more
“Were the DREAM Act not to pass we would handle the situation as we do now,” Morton said, “which is: enforce the law, focusing on our priorities and act on individual cases on a case by case basis.”
The DREAM Act would allow undocumented youth who have lived in the country for at least five years to get on a path to citizenship if they have a clean criminal record and commit two years to higher education or the military, and clear a host of other hurdles and checks. The House passed the DREAM Act last week, and it is scheduled for a vote in the Senate on Saturday morning. The DHS officials’ comments offer a final endorsement for the narrow immigration bill, which by White House estimates would benefit 65,000 undocumented youth.
Those who oppose the DREAM Act today are anti-immigrant groups like NumbersUSA and ALIPAC, who say the bill “rewards” undocumented immigrants. Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions called the DREAM Act “amnesty” and said that the DREAM Act would encourage more people to immigrate to the U.S., even though the DREAM Act only benefits those who’ve already lived in the country for five years, and demands that eligible youth get on a decade-long probationary waiting period before they can qualify even for a green card.
Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison has said she opposes the DREAM Act because it would allow young people to sponsor their family members for naturalization, and thus benefit many more people than she’s comfortable with.more