Not to worry though, I’m sure they’re just picking lettuce.

Teams assigned to make sure foreigners ordered out of the United States actually leave have a backlog of more than 600,000 cases and can’t accurately account for the fugitives’ whereabouts, the government reported Monday.

The report by the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general found that the effectiveness of teams assigned to find the fugitives was hampered by “insufficient detention capacity, limitations of an immigration database and inadequate working space.”

Even though more than $204 million was allocated for 52 fugitive operations teams since 2003, a backlog of 623,292 cases existed as of August of 2006, the report said.

The number of illegal immigrants in the United States has been estimated at between 11.5 million and 12 million. About 5.4 percent of them are believed to be “fugitive aliens,” those who have failed to leave the country after being ordered out.

I have a novel idea. How about when they are “ordered out”, you know that time when they are in our custody, we physically take them to the border and push their asses out instead of simply taking their word for it that they’ll pack up and go. Crazy idea, I know, but it just might work.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS