Some illegal immigrants are the equivalent of jaywalkers, while others are serious criminals, a White House official said in describing the administration’s focus on prioritizing deportations,
CNSNews.com reported.
Cecilia Munoz, the White House’s intergovernmental affairs director, made the comment during a Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute conference this week.
"If you were running the police department of any urban area in this country, you would spend more resources going after serious criminals than after jaywalkers. DHS [Department of Homeland Security] is doing the immigration equivalent of the same thing," Munoz said.
Under the new Immigration and Customs Enforcement policy, immigration officials will prioritize deportation orders, targeting those convicted of serious crimes or who are a national security or public safety threat. The policy also directs agents to take into consideration how long illegal aliens have been in the country and whether they are married and have children.
"We have 10 million, 11 million undocumented people in this country and it's abundantly clear to anybody who's paying attention that we're not going to deport that entire population," Munoz said.
"It's not humanly possible. It's ridiculously expensive . . . and so what DHS is doing for the first time is trying to have a strategy around the law-enforcement work that it does, and so while it's enforcing the law vigorously . . . it's also making strategic judgments about who is a priority for enforcement and who isn't."
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