The Blaze -- Pete Kasperowicz
The government watchdog for the Department of Homeland Security released a report this week saying that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement released nearly 13,000 illegal immigrants in fiscal year 2014, because ICE deemed they were not enforcement priorities.
The same report from the DHS’ Office of Inspector General found that DHS is not gathering and assessing enough data on its various policies of prosecutorial discretion, even though it had promised to do so.
The report noted that last year, after President Barack Obama announced his executive action on immigration, DHS released memos to describe its new immigration enforcement priorities. Those memos were based on the concept of “prosecutorial discretion,” which the government says allows it not to enforce immigration laws against immigrants that don’t pose any immediate threat to the country.
Included in one of those memos was a promise by DHS that it would collect data on its new policy, in part to help show how well the policy is working. But the OIG said this is not being done.
“According to the policy, the data is to be collected to promote public confidence in the department’s immigration enforcement activities and to provide greater transparency in annual reporting of DHS’ removal statistics,” the report said.
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