US

ICE Head: All Illegals Should Be Worried, Looking Over Their Shoulders

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The acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement chief Thomas D. Homan warned all illegals Tuesday they should be worried and looking over their shoulders, not just illegals with criminal backgrounds.

During a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing, Homan said that ICE is chiefly concerned with illegals who are also criminals, but added that all illegals will be subject to deportation, the Washington Examiner reports.

“If you are in this country illegally, and you committed a crime by entering this country, you should be uncomfortable, you should look over your shoulder, and you need to be worried,” Homan said.

“No population is off the table,” he continued. “We’ll issue detainers to anybody in the country illegally. Our priorities are criminals first, but if you’re asking me if we are going to put detainers on people that have not been convicted of a crime, yes we will.”

A detainer is a tool ICE uses to request that local law enforcement hold individuals for 48 hours, so that ICE can make a decision on whether to initiate more serious deportation proceedings.

Homan said that the Obama administration did not let ICE arrest non-criminal illegals in the past.

According to Homan, arresting non-criminal illegals is important because most of the criminal illegals in the United States were first non-criminals.

“If we wait for them to violate yet another law against the citizens of this country, it’s late,” Homan said.
“We shouldn’t wait.”

Homan also asked Congress during the hearing to aggressively go after sanctuary cities that are currently providing safe havens for criminal illegals.

There are an estimated 11 million illegals living in the U.S.

Although the Trump administration has issued strong rhetoric against illegal immigration, data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services shows that 17,000 new applicants for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program were approved in the first few months in 2017.

Moreover, 107,000 illegals under DACA had their work permits extended. Trump called DACA “unconstitutional executive amnesty” while on the campaign trail, but the program has proceeded as before under the Obama administration.

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