Now that Donald Trump is in office, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officials are free to actually do their jobs again, and they are opening up about just how bad things got under Obama's leadership.
U.S. immigration officials have revealed that they face a deportation backlog of 550,000 illegal immigrants who were given temporary amnesty by former President Obama or simply let off the hook by liberal judges.
The massive backlog is being tackled by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but the sheer numbers - bigger than the populations of Atlanta or Sacramento -- is overwhelming the agency's enforcement and removal department.
This week as ICE and other immigration officials reviewed successes under President Trump, a reporter asked Matthew T. Albence, executive associate director for enforcement and removal operations, if he knew the number of outstanding deportation orders. The conversation went this way:
Albence: "Ballpark is going to be around 550,000."Frankly, this is incredibly disturbing. The president and his fellow government officials can't simply pick and choose which laws they will enforce and which ones they won't. Immigration laws are real laws that must be enforced effectively in order to be taken seriously.
Reporter: "Whoa. Why is it so high?"
Albence: "Well for a large part of the last four or five years we've been unable to take enforcement action against those individuals."
Under Obama, many deportation actions were delayed starting in 2014, he said.
Even if ICE officers found one in a jail, Albence said that they were advised against seizing the illegal. "Our officers had to turn their heads and walk the other way. So that's a large part of that problem, the fact that we couldn't enforce the law," he said.
And liberal judges also forgave or protected illegals, even illegal populations like several Iraqi's in the Detroit area, some sought for murder, according to ICE.
"We need to hold liberal judges accountable," said ICE Acting Director Thomas D. Homan.
And, he added, a third factor in the build up of deportation orders is because some 300 sanctuary cities refused to let ICE officers into city jails to seize illegals.
The main problem with what Obama did is that it removes any incentive for immigrants to come to the U.S. by legal means. If even the president of the United States doesn't believe that deportation laws should be enforced, why would anyone want undergo the legal immigration process, which can take years?
In the end, enforcing immigration laws is crucial to motivate immigrants to come to his country legally, and for the safety of the American people.
Comment: It's at least possible to come up with a justification for why liberals would want to stop some deportations: "compassion" for immigrants' family members, for example. But what could the justification possibly be for making an active effort to keep criminal illegal aliens in the country? Anybody?