The Obama administration is doing the unthinkable — defending immigration law.
Lawyers for the Department of Justice filed a 60-page response on Thursday asking a federal judge to reconsider her ruling that called for tens of thousands of illegal immigrants to be released from family detention facilities. The DOJ said that those holding centers run by the Department of Homeland Security are necessary to help deter illegal immigration.
Politico reported that DOJ attorneys fear that the court order by Judge Dolly Gee of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California could mean that immigrant families could not be held in facilities for longer than five days.
That short span of time would make it impossible to place them into deportation proceedings, according to the DOJ.
“The proposed order would greatly impact DHS’s operational capacity and its ability to secure the borders while facilitating lawful trade and travel,” they wrote in the filing.
Obama administration officials fear that the ruling will also be a catalyst for future waves of illegal immigration from Central and South America.
Pro-amnesty groups were outraged by the DOJ’s response, with the American Immigration Lawyers Association saying the Obama administration should be “embarrassed” by its call on Gee to reconsider the ruling.
“Ever since Judge Gee first threatened her order, the administration has been scrambling to quickly release some of the mothers and children, and they’ve bungled the process badly, leaving in detention many women and children who have been locked up way too long,” said American Immigrant Lawyers Association president Victor Nieblas Pradis. “The government’s protest that ‘we’ve fixed things, we promise’ rings hollow when the sharp light of reality shines on the detention centers.”
Still, the DOJ has a reason worry about the ramifications of Gee’s decision.
According to the DOJ’s Executive Office of Immigration Review, 84 percent of illegal immigrants with children who have not been detained skip out on their deportation hearings. For unaccompanied minors, 46 percent don’t appear for their day in court.
