Immigration Crackdown: Customs pushed envelope to hit goal

The Obama adminsitration continues to bend over backwards to appease conservative demands to be tough on immigration. 

Customs pushed envelope to hit goal: "When ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) officials realized in the final weeks of the fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, that the agency still was in jeopardy of falling short of last year's mark (in deportations) , it scrambled to reach the goal. Officials quietly directed immigration officers to bypass backlogged immigration courts and time-consuming deportation hearings whenever possible, internal e-mails and interviews show.

Instead, officials told immigration officers to encourage eligible foreign nationals to accept a quick pass to their countries without a negative mark on their immigration record, ICE employees said.

The option, known as voluntary return, may have allowed hundreds of immigrants - who typically would have gone before an immigration judge to contest deportation for offenses such as drunken driving, domestic violence and misdemeanor assault - to leave the country. A voluntary return doesn't bar a foreigner from applying for legal residence or traveling to the United States in the future. ... 


Without these efforts and the more than 25,000 deportations that came with them, the agency would not have topped last year's record level of 389,834, current and former ICE employees and officials said." Dec. 6, 2010, Washington Post