Word: homeland
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...quite possibly hundreds of thousands, treat the southern border as a revolving door to crimes of opportunity. The situation is so out of control that of the 400,000 illegal aliens who have been ordered to be deported, 80,000 have criminal records--and the agency in charge, the Homeland Security Department, does not have a clue as to the whereabouts of any of them, criminal or noncriminal, including those from countries that support terrorism...
...sentences. In many cases, the INS has filed detainers, meaning the prisons are obliged to hold the individuals until they can be picked up by immigration agents and returned to their native countries. But state law-enforcement authorities are not permitted to keep prisoners beyond their original sentence. When Homeland Security agents fail to show up promptly, which is often, the alien convicts are released back into the community. In addition to all these, at least 4 million people who arrived in the U.S. legally on work, tourist or education visas have decided to ignore immigration laws and stay permanently...
...many were caught. TIME estimates, based on longtime government formulas for calculating how many elude capture, that as many as 190,000 illegals from countries other than Mexico have melted into the U.S. population so far this year. The border patrol, which is run by the Department of Homeland Security, refuses to break down OTMs by country. But local law officers, ranchers and others who confront the issue daily tell TIME they have encountered not only a wide variety of Latin Americans (from Guatemala, El Salvador, Brazil, Nicaragua and Venezuela) but also intruders from Afghanistan, Bulgaria, Russia and China...
...with some hardship but little if any risk of punishment. Thousands cross the U.S.-Mexico border multiple times. Under immigration law, they could be imprisoned after the second offense. But no one is. Nor on the third, fourth or fifth. In fact, almost never. When asked whether Homeland Security would initiate criminal proceedings against a person who, say, is picked up on four occasions coming into the country illegally, a border-patrol representative said if it did, the immigration legal system would collapse. Said the spokeswoman: "Because there's such a large influx of people coming across...
While the Department of Homeland Security seemingly lacks the money to secure the border, it does have money to spend in quixotic ways. In a $13 million experimental program started in July, the border patrol will not just drop illegal Mexican aliens at the border but actually fly them, at taxpayer expense, into the heart of Mexico. The theory is that it will discourage them from making the trek north again. But as one illegal, a Dallas construction worker who was among the 138 aboard the first flight, told a Los Angeles Times reporter, "I will be going back...