167K Illegal Alien Criminals Allegedly At Large In America

About 167,000 illegal immigrants with criminal records are allegedly on the loose in the United States after being released by authorities.

That was the assessment of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) think tank in a study of Immigration and Customs Enforcement statistics.

In arguing that U.S. immigration enforcement has collapsed, CIS also indicated that overall deportations have dropped 34 percent from last year and that nearly one million illegal immigrants who have been ordered deported are still in the country. According to the CIS report, “As of the end of the 2014 fiscal year, there were approximately 167,000 convicted criminal aliens at large in the United States (released by ICE) who have been ordered removed and exhausted all appeals.”

The report also indicates that possibly as many as 80,000 illegal aliens “with criminal histories who were able to escape deportation proceedings in 2014, even after being encountered by an ICE officer.”

Commenting on the findings, Jessica Vaughn of CIS told Breitbart News that “prosecutorial discretion as practiced by the Obama administration has transformed immigration enforcement into a massive catch-and-release program that makes a joke of the law, fails to deter illegal settlement, and allows even illegal aliens who commit crimes to remain here. These policies inflict real harm on Americans and legal immigrants in the form of lost jobs, depressed wages, additional social services, and even lost lives. In addition, with the rise of ISIS and other terrorist groups around the world, our lax policies represent an unnecessary national security risk.”

Aside from the issue of immigrants with criminal records, after being temporarily held in detention facilities for a short period of time, the federal government has been releasing most of the tens of thousands of Central American unaccompanied minors and adults who have illegally surged across the border to relatives or foster families in the U.S.

In June, based on Capitol Hill sources, the Washington Examiner claimed that 90 percent of primarily teenage illegal immigrants won’t appear for their immigration court hearings, “meaning at least 135,000 of the youths will simply vanish into the country this year alone.”

Moreover, seven out of ten illegal alien families apprehended at the Mexican border apparently never show up for their appointments with federal immigration agents after being let go by the Border Patrol, according to information obtained by the Associated Press. A separate account from the Associated Press has indicated that deportations have decreased by 20 percent (rather than 34 percent) from last year, but could hit a seven-year low. In 2012, President Obama, without obtaining the approval of Congress, suspended the deportation of about one million illegal immigrants under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. He has also vowed to unilaterally implement some form of amnesty for illegal aliens after the November elections.

As The Inquisitr has previously reported, a Texas Department of Public Safety study claimed that about 200,000 illegal immigrants were arrested and charged with more than 640,000 crimes since 2008, according to the agency’s Texas Criminal Alien Arrest Data report.

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