Napolitano grilled on immigration enforcement

[Jeanfromfillmore]

WASHINGTON — Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano's invitation to tout her $59 billion spending request to Congress on Wednesday morphed instead into fodder for the nation's irascible debate over undocumented immigrants, a snapshot of fevered quarrels to come in this presidential election year.

Led by a group of conservative Texans, House Republicans told Napolitano they viewed President Barack Obama's policy of selective deportation of unlawful immigrants with criminal records as a program effectively granting amnesty to millions of other undocumented immigrants allowed to remain in the U.S.

Napolitano, the former governor and attorney general of Arizona, fought back by emphasizing her department is making tough enforcement choices with increasingly scarce resources.

The Obama administration deported more unlawful immigrants last year than anytime in the six-year history of the department, Napolitano said. A record 55 percent of the 396, 906 individuals returned to their homelands had been convicted of felonies or misdemeanors, including 1,119 murderers and 5,848 convicted of sexual offenses.

“It does sound like the administration has implemented de facto amnesty for a large segment of those who are here illegally,” said Rep. John Culberson, R-Houston.

Napolitano countered: “I think the amnesty term is quite frankly way too overused with respect to immigration. This is an area that profoundly needs to be re-examined by Congress.”

Her presentation kicks off months of hearings, debate and eventual tradeoffs to underwrite operations by DHS' 230,000 personnel for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1.

Republican lawmakers did not let Napolitano off the hook during the nearly three-hour hearing.

Culberson challenged Napolitano for largely overlooking unlawful immigrants who abide by the law once in the U.S. She conceded U.S. authorities would not seek to deport illegal immigrants such as a young mother with a nursing child born in the United States, or young adults who arrived with parents, attended school, got good grades and even served in the armed forces.

But that doorway to admission effectively implements provisions of the so-called Dream Act that failed to clear Congress, Culberson said.

“It is not the law but you're making it the law,” he added.

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