Hollow Blog

The June 2, 2008 Washington Post article “Immigration Prosecutions Hit New High: Increased Use of Criminal Charges Strains System” further strengthens the argument that the U.S. Immigration service is dysfunctional and many of its new “policies” and practices are based on Administration politics, xenophobia, and other other undesirable characteristics.

As we noted earlier, these type of “policies” and practices hurt the U.S. in many different ways, including:

• deterring legal resources away from much-more-needed cases (see below)
• prison/jail overcrowding

Some highlights of the Washington Post article include:

 [Some] federal officials are more critical, warning that the focus on immigration is distorting the functions of law enforcement and the courts. Several Arizona officials noted that U.S. prosecutors there last year were so short on resources, they chose not to prosecute a number of marijuana seizures of less than 500 pounds, although they later revised the guideline to 20 pounds.

And…

“We’re concerned about the misdirection of resources,” said Heather Williams, first assistant to the federal public defender of Arizona. Each day her office’s lawyers spend on misdemeanor border-crossing cases, she said, “they’re not talking about a drug case, a sex crime, a murder, assault or any number of white-collar cases — and the same is obviously true of the prosecutors….This is taking on a life of its own,” she said.

And, finally, on the topic of civil liberties…

Williams also warned that the program tests the U.S. legal system’s promise of fairness to the accused. “If we as a U.S. citizen were placed in any other country on the planet, and had to resolve a case in a day that could result in being deported and having a criminal record, we would be outraged, and so would our government,” she said.