A Center for Immigration Studies analysis says that an executive amnesty that protects alien traffic offenders from deportation could shield drunk drivers and tens of thousands of other offenders convicted of drugged driving, vehicular homicide, carjacking, vehicular homicide, and joyriding. Advocates have been pushing the Obama Administration to exempt illegal aliens from deportation if they only committed a traffic offense but the Center says such offenses are not “harmless.”
The analysis found that from 2004 to 2013, 258,689 aliens whose most serious state or local conviction was a traffic offense were deported by ICE. More than half (57%) of those deported in that category were convicted of drunk or drugged driving. Over the same period, 55 percent had been previously deported. In 2013, 22,740 illegal aliens were deported after drunk or drugged driving convictions. 70 percent of these aliens were prior deportees.
“An amnesty to benefit alien traffic offenders undermines the enforcement of immigration law and circumvents Congress with the sole goal of protecting illegal aliens from deportation.," said Dan Cadman, a co-author of the report. "To suggest those convicted of traffic crimes, many of which involved fatalities, are not a threat to public safety or are not worthy of law enforcement resources is a slap in the face to family members who have lost loved ones to reckless illegal alien drivers.”
Read the Center's analysis or a related Washington Times article.
