The program allowed illegals caught by ICE to avoid detainment so long as they agreed to appear in court later for formal deportation hearings. But barely any illegals ever showed up.
Last week’s move by the president marked the second time he ordered an end to “catch and release.” He tried stopping it last year, but due to a lack of resources, the program continued.
What makes the president’s most recent attempt to halt “catch and release” notable is that this time he “asked Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to produce a list of military facilities that could be used to detain illegal immigrants,” according to Reuters.
Cue the New York Post:
The federal government currently uses 109 facilities across the country to hold about 40,000 immigrants threatened with deportation, including six in New Jersey and one in upstate Orange County.
More than a third of these centers — which include county jails, for-profit lockups run by private contractors, and ICE’s own facilities — are already clustered along the southern border in Texas, Arizona and California.
But they contain far too little space to house the more than 300,000 border crossers who were apprehended in the southwest in 2017 alone.
Trump’s order could add an unspecified number of additional holding areas. Some of them, the order said, may be created in modified or re-purposed military facilities.
Because of Trump’s praiseworthy willingness to really tackle illegal immigration (versus just spouting talking points but never following through), illegals are now terrified.
“People are panicked,” Stephanie Teatro, the co-executive director of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, said recently to The Washington Post. “People are terrified to drive. People are terrified to leave their homes.”
Many actual Americans are likewise horrified at the prospect of being murdered or raped by an illegal immigrant, but who cares, right?
The Post’s story specifically concerned a federal raid on a meat-processing plant in Tennessee that nabbed 86 illegals. Coupled with Trump’s decision to deploy the National Guard to the southern border, end “catch and release” and now push for the launch of Club Pablo (as I call them), illegals have every reason on Earth to be terrified.
And you know what? I ain’t one bit bothered by it. Those who choose to flout our laws deserve...