A Republican lawmaker said Tuesday that President Obama has started to implement a new phase of his immigration plan that could make it easier for illegal immigrants to escape deportation.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) said his committee has learned that Obama is starting to implement a new Priority Enforcement Program, or PEP. That program was announced last year when Obama announced his dramatic new executive actions on immigration, including two efforts that have so far been blocked by a federal judge.
While the Obama administration says PEP is aimed at beefing up enforcement of immigration laws, Goodlatte says PEP is really making things worse.
“The only priority contained in the Priority Enforcement Program is to ensure that our immigration laws are not enforced in the interior of the United States,” Goodlatte said. “By scrapping a law enforcement tool that keeps our communities safe and replacing it with a new program that permits the release of criminal aliens, President Obama is needlessly endangering our communities,” Goodlatte said in a statement.
“It’s past time for the Obama administration to get its priorities straight and protect the American people instead of their political interests,” Goodlatte said in a statement.
Goodlatte argued that the Secure Communities program already identified jailed criminal aliens in a bid to more efficiently move them out of the country, while PEP will allow many of these illegal aliens to remain in the country.
Specifically, he charged that under PEP, officials will only be able to move convicted aliens out of state and local law enforcement custody, while those who have not been convicted can be released. He said that’s weaker than current law, which includes a much wider definition of removable criminal aliens.
Once PEP is implemented, the Department of Homeland Security will not pursue aliens who commit: “fraud or material misrepresentation in the immigration process; drug possession offenses; most theft offenses, including identity theft; nearly all crimes involving moral turpitude; and, aliens who have misdemeanors that the Administration does not deem to be ‘significant,'” according to Goodlatte’s statement.
Goodlatte said the change will let alleged criminals back onto the streets at the risk of failing to protect the community. However, people who are caught at the border trying to enter illegally, people who cannot prove they have been “physically present” in the U.S. since Jan. 1, 2014, people who abuse their visas, or people who were “issued a final order of removal on or after Jan. 1, 2014” are not protected under PEP, the press release said.
A White House fact sheet about Obama’s immigration plan said a key part of the plan was to ensure the deportation of people “suspected of terrorism, violent criminals, gang members, and recent border crossers.”
