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   Promoting awareness of problems and solutions in U.S. immigration policies                  
Michael Cutler, former INS agent, New York

AMNESTY TRUTH SHEET

The Truth About Amnesty
Amnesty overlooks the alien's illegal entry and ongoing illegal presence and creates a new legal status that allows the recipient to live and work in the country.

Get the two-page Truth Sheet.

U.S. Senate

Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007
This is the highly controversial 'compromise' immigration reform bill that failed in the Senate. It drew more criticism than support from all sides in the debate.

Get the 790-page bill, S. 1348.

The Secure Borders, Economic Opportunity and Immigration
Reform Act of 2007

This is the "security-first" bill that was designed to draw more votes for comprehensive immigration reform. It failed a critical vote in the Senate.

Get the 762-page bill, S. 1639.

GAO Testimony

Prospects For Biometric US-VISIT Exit Capability Remain Unclear
DHS has invested about $1.3 billion over 4 years and delivered basically one-half of US-VISIT, meaning that biometrically enabled entry capabilities are operating at almost 300 air, sea, and land POEs, but comparable exit capabilities are not. Moreover, the prospects for this changing are essentially as uncertain today as they were 4 years ago.

Get the 16-page report.

CBO Testimony

Budgetary Impact of Current and Proposed Border Security and Immigration Policies
CBO estimates that implementation of S.2611 would require $81 billion in additional appropriations over the 10-year period, resulting in $78 billion in added outlays. Economic growth would increase by only a small degree.

Get the 12-page report.

Give Me Your Murderers, Your Huddled Cons...

Book Review of "The Deporter" by Ames Holbrook

Michael Cutler

October 14, 2007 -- America's immigration system is obviously broken, but to get a sense for just how dysfunctional it really is, scan the pages of Ames Holbrook's “The Deporter." This first-person account of the four years Holbrook spent working to deport criminal aliens from the United States is as hair-raising as it is distressing.

The Deporter, by Ames Holbrook Take Holbrook's description of his encounter with an illegal alien named “Rodolfo," a career criminal “with eight felony convictions, burglary to battery, and a sex assault thrown in." Holbrook walked him out of jail but instead of throwing him out of the country, he had to release him free and clear. Why? Because he falsely claimed he was from Cuba.

There is a short list of countries - in Holbrook's terminology the “Big Four" - that do not take back their criminal citizens: Cuba, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. If the country will not issue travel documents for its citizens to return home, there is nothing deportation officers can do to get these criminals out of the United States. Holbrook explains that many criminals know the system well enough to know how not to get deported. Rodolfo, who was most likely a Mexican, knew that if he admitted his true nationality he'd be deported back home. So he claimed to be Cuban and without any document to prove otherwise (which is why illegals are offically known as undocumented aliens), he couldn't be deported.

What makes things even worse is that because of a 2001 Supreme Court decision, the immigration authorities can no longer indefinitely detain criminal aliens from countries that will not take them back. So when a criminal alien is finished serving his jail term, deportation officers like Holbrook are forced to release them back among the rest of us. In another case, Holbrook had to inform a Vietnamese woman called Jacqueline that the violent felon who attacked her was being released from custody. Since his native country, Laos, wouldn't take him back, and the courts ruled he couldn't be held indefinitely, he had to be let go. Holbrook says he is haunted by her cries of anguish.

As a former immigration agent, I can sympathize with Holbrook's predicament. But some of his descriptions of breaking rules and resorting to deceitful tactics just to get criminal aliens deported - like lying about the crimes for which the alien was convicted so that the foreign country will be forced to accept their citizen - are worrisome to say the least.

This is a story for anyone who is concerned about how the failure to secure this country's borders imperils our safety and our nation's security. But it's only one story. Frighteningly, each of the other components of the immigration system is just as dysfunctional as the deportation branch described here.



Michael Cutler, a former Senior Investigator with INS in New York, has been an expert witness in more than a dozen Congressional hearings. He is a board member on the American Council for Immigration Reform (ANCIR), a Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies a(CIS), and an advisor to the 911 Families for a Secure America. Among his areas of concern is the nexus between immigration and national security.

Media queries for comments, articles and appearances can be addressed to Mr. Cutler at: mcutler@ancir.org.

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America's Immigration Security Crisis

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More Maxwell...

Checking Terrorism at the Border
Employee corruption within USCIS... how ongoing national security investigations are being jeopardized!

Get the 35-page brief.

Listen to the testimony.

Check the video.

More Jenks...

Shortfalls of 1986
Amnesty

Failed to wipe the illegal
immigration slate clean; failed to deter future
ilegal immigration.

Get the 17-page brief.

American Council for Immigration Reform  |  P.O. Box 2752 Arlington, VA 22202
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