Friday, January 30, 2015

STUNNER: Arrests of Undocumented Migrants in Southern U.S. at Lowest Since 1970s

1/30/2015

WASHINGTON – Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Thursday that detentions of undocumented migrants trying to cross the southern U.S. border in 2014 fell to the lowest level since the 1970s.

“These numbers are no doubt partially due to economic conditions and trends in the U.S., Mexico and Central America, but also due to the very large investment this nation has made in border security over the last 15 years,” Johnson said at the Woodrow Wilson Center, a Washington think-tank, where he gave his evaluation of his department’s activities in 2014 and elucidated its goals for 2015.

Johnson emphasized that detentions of undocumented migrants on the southern border have fallen off drastically from their highest point, in Fiscal Year 2000, when 1.6 million immigrants were arrested, a figure far in excess of the 480,000 detentions made during Fiscal Year 2014.

“We are taking steps to fix our broken immigration system. Some say we should have waited for Congress to act. Let’s not forget that we did wait, for years, and Congress did not act,” Johnson emphasized.

President Barack Obama “continues to urge Congress to finish the job and pass a comprehensive, bipartisan immigration bill. He is willing to work with any serious partner – Democrat, Republican or Independent – who wants to fix the system,” even though the president has already taken executive action to ease the situation of undocumented migrants, Johnson said.


source

No comments:

Post a Comment