Catch and Release

Rich Lowry wrote in National Review Online “Catch and release” should stay with the fishes.

There are two types of people who are intimately familiar with the practice of “catch and release” — fishermen and border-control agents. Fishermen at least get some satisfaction from it. For border-control agents, it is a symptom of this nation’s contempt for its own immigration laws. When Mexicans are caught crossing into the U.S., they are returned across the border. When illegals from countries Other Than Mexico (OTMs) are caught, it’s more complicated. They often come from Latin American countries that have various obstacles to repatriation,

If there are obstacles to repatriation, then we need to explore solutions to those obstacles, but just letting someone go is not the solution. If we can't send them back to their country of origin, what would we do with them should they show up for their deportion hearing, and should the decision be to deport?

and we don’t have the space to hold them. So they are released into the U.S. after they promise to show up at a deportation hearing. That promise and $80 might get you the services of an illegal day laborer. Congress is beginning a scorching battle over immigration policy, pitting anti-enforcement business and ethnic lobbies backing the McCain-Kennedy amnesty bill against grassroots supporters of a tough-enforcement approach, embodied in the more muscular Kyl-Cornyn bill. There is no better emblem of the border insanity Congress must fix than the travesty of “catch and release.”

I completely agree. I cannot see any reasonable explanation for this policy.

The Border Patrol is set to apprehend 150,000 OTMs in this fiscal year. Most of those are caught in the Rio Grande Valley Sector in Southeast Texas, where 52,160 OTMs have been caught so far this year. Of those, 92 percent have been released on their own recognizance — and are probably bound for an urban area near you. The immigration court in Harlingen, Texas, has a failure-to-appear rate of roughly 90 percent. The illegals are supposed to provide an address where they can be found. Instead, they provide fake addresses or none at all. OTMs are known to present themselves to border agents once they cross the border so they can get their “notice to appear” (or “to disappear,” as it is commonly called) and duly proceed on their way. Law-enforcement officials tell of people claiming to be from South or Central America being released although they don’t speak Spanish. An estimated 400,000 fugitive illegals in the U.S. have failed to appear for their hearings. The office within the Department of Homeland Security responsible for detentions and removals has 18,500 detention beds. Of those, 16,800 are reserved for criminals and others who urgently have to be detained. Those beds are overwhelmed, since so many criminal aliens attempt to (and do) make it into the U.S. (Between March 2003 and February 2004, nearly 80,000 criminal aliens were deported.) That leaves only 1,700 beds for everyone else. It’s not enough.

Then buy more beds, or let them sleep on the floor.