For as long as I’ve been writing this blog (since 2007) I’ve been led to believe that we can’t deport criminal Somalis back to Somalia, but I see that in 2005, the US Supreme Court said, sure we can!
The issue was brought to my attention this morning while reading an immigration lawyer’s plea at the Huffington Post to not deport the criminal aliens recently rounded up by ICE in the latest Obama Administration push to get the bad guys off the streets and out of your towns. Of course, Bill Ong Hing is making the case that if they’ve served time, they should get to stay, but those rounded up recently have not served their time YET!
Here is Mr. Hing, professor of Law University of San Francisco:
With great fanfare last week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials announced the arrest of some 3,000 convicted “criminal aliens” during a its seven-day national “Operation Cross-Check” enforcement operations. The attention-grabbing announcement emphasized that more than 1,600 had felony and highlighted seven of the arrestees who had been convictions for kidnapping, attempted murder, armed assault, or child molestation. That’s juicy information for law-and-order enthusiasts and the anti-immigration establishment.
The problem with these types of ICE actions and announcements is that they blur the picture of who makes up the so-called “criminal aliens.” Immigrants who commit crimes and are subject to deportation come from all over the world: Mexico, Asia, Canada, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. The U.S. Supreme Court has even endorsed the deportation of a Somalian refugee, convicted of assault, back to Somalia, where no formal government exists. In 2002, the United States began deporting Cambodian refugees convicted of crimes back to communist-dominated Cambodia. So while ICE may indeed be rounding up and removing hundreds of so-called “illegal immigrants” who have committed crimes, the agency is also engaged in deporting lawful permanent resident aliens (those with “green cards”) and refugees convicted of crimes. And these deportees have served their sentences in the criminal justice system before being deported.
Here is the 2005 Supreme Court ruling in Jama v. ICE.
Gee, I wonder if we could save ourselves a whole lot of taxpayer money by deporting convicted Somali murderers (like this guy) back to Somalia?
By the way, as we have noted in this previous post, Canada has no qualms about sending criminal Somalis back to Mogadishu.