Immigrant Rights Advocates Target Federal Deportation Program
18th August 2011
Immigrant rights advocates this week are organizing protests against a federal initiative aimed at deporting illegal immigrants who have been convicted of serious crimes.
There can be no legitimate objection to such a program. In fact, the government ought to consider it a core duty and function to get rid of such people.
But critics of the program have staged protests in cities across the country this week, claiming Secure Communities should be terminated on the grounds that it snares minor offenders, many of whom are never even convicted of a crime, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Apparently these ‘critics of the program’ don’t know what ‘illegal’ means in the phrase ‘illegal immigrant’. If someone is in this country illegally, then they are by definition a criminal, and not a ‘minor offender’.