Congress Daily - ICE Leader Promises Increased Effort To Round Up Illegals

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The head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement pledged Thursday to ratchet up enforcement against noncriminal illegal immigrants after a top Republican on the House Appropriations Committee accused ICE of adopting a policy of virtual amnesty.

"We are going to do better," said John Morton, assistant Homeland Security secretary for ICE, in testimony before the House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee on the agency's FY11 budget proposal.

Morton was responding to criticism from Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee ranking member Hal Rogers, R-Ky., that ICE enforcement operations at work sites had declined 68 percent in 2009 and yielded only 24 administrative arrests in January. "They are not just down; they've plummeted," said Rogers.

"The way I see it ... it looks as though you are an enforcer trapped in a poorly veiled effort at so-called 'immigration reform,'" Rogers said.

Morton denied the charge, arguing that under a congressional mandate, the agency's primary mission is to identify and deport illegal immigrants with criminal records. "I think everyone would agree that you have to detain those people and you need to get rid of them," he said.

Although the top priorities are border enforcement and pursuit of criminal immigrants, Morton said ICE has not abandoned operations against non-criminal illegal immigrants. "It is not a question that we have, in any way, given up on," he said.

Rogers also clashed with Morton over the leak of a Homeland Security Inspector General report on ICE worksite enforcement to the press in December. The lawmaker demanded that Morton submit a memo to the subcommittee naming the leaker and explaining how he or she was punished.

When Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman David Price, D-N.C., attempted to intervene in Morton's behalf, Rogers declared: "He knows what I want, and he knows I won't rest until I get it."

Morton offered to submit an account of the leak episode but hedged on revealing the identity of the leaker, explaining that the IG had looked into the matter and found that no wrongdoing was involved.

Morton also outlined his agency's progress in installing data systems in the nation's prisons and jails to identify illegal immigrant inmates. He said ICE would meet the congressionally imposed goal of having the systems operating in 270 incarceration facilities with the bulk of the nation's inmate population by the end of this year.

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