(CNSNews.com) – Immigration and
Customs Enforcement(ICE) has released 2,837 convicted criminal alien sex
offenders back into American communities in order to comply with a Supreme
Court decision authored by Clinton-appointed Justice Stephen Breyer, according
to a new report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
The 2,837 sex offenders represented
five percent of the 59,347 deportable aliens that have been released from
detention under the supervision of U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE), according to the GAO report, which was released Thursday.“There are circumstances in which criminal aliens who have been ordered removed from the United States – including those convicted of a sex offense – cannot be removed,” the report states. “For example, a criminal alien may not be removed because the designated country will not accept the alien’s return.”
The GAO report refers to the 2001
Supreme Court case Zadvydas v. Davis to explain why ICE is
required to release foreigners who have been convicted of sex crimes. In its
5-4 decision, the court ruled that the indefinite detention of removable aliens
for greater than six months is unconstitutional unless there is “significant
likelihood of removal in the reasonably foreseeable future.”
“Freedom from imprisonment lies at
the heart of the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause,” Associate
Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in the majority opinion. Breyer
was joined in this opinion by J.P. Stevens (a Gerald Ford apppointee), Sandra
Day O’Connor (a Reagan appointee), Ruth Bader Ginsburg (a Clinton appointee),
and David Souter (a George H.W. Bush appointee).
But writing for the minority,
Justice Antonin Scalia (a Reagan appointee) said: “Insofar as a claimed legal
right to release into this country is concerned, an alien under final order of
removal stands on an equal footing with an inadmissable alien at the threshold
of entry: He has no such right.”
Justice Anthony Kennedy (also a
Reagan appointee) concurred, noting that “the authority to detain beyond the
removal period is to protect the community, not to negotiate the aliens’
return… An alien’s admission to this country is conditioned upon compliance
with our laws, and removal is the consequence of a breach of that
understanding.”
Justice Clarence Thomas (a George
H.W. Bush appointee) and William Rehnquist (a Nixon appointee) also dissented
from Breyer’s opinion.
The GAO report also revealed that
large numbers of convicted alien sex offenders that ICE did in fact manage to
deport from the country simply turned around and came back in–and then
committed another offense inside the United States.
“According to the data that ICE-ERO
provided to us,” said the GAO report, “of 4359 alien sex offenders who were
removed from the country between January and August 2012, 220 of them (5
percent) had previously been removed but subsequently returned to the United
States and were arrested for another offense.”
Also, about five percent of released
aliens sex offenders did not register as sex offenders in the communities
where they settled as required by federal law. “The risk that alien sex
offenders will reside in U.S. communities without being registered is
increased,” the GAO concluded.
Source: CNS News, 9/14/13 http://cnsnews.com/news/article/alissa-tabirian/ice-released-2837-convicted-alien-sex-offenders-comply-supreme-court#sthash.z9NSGT5M.dpuf
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