DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano is tentatively scheduled to testify before the United States Senate Judiciary Committee about DHS immigration enforcement policies on May 6, 2009. Given Secretary Napolitano’s novel interpretations of federal law, the Heritage Foundation will be posting a series of questions (and suggested answers) for the Secretary. Questions for Napolitano # 2: Does the Obama Administration unequivocally support E-Verify and IMAGE?
DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano is tentatively scheduled to testify before the United States Senate Judiciary Committee about DHS immigration enforcement policies on May 6, 2009. Given Secretary Napolitano’s novel interpretations of federal law, the Heritage Foundation will be posting a series of questions (and suggested answers) for the Secretary. Questions for Napolitano: # 1, The Future of State and Local Immigration Enforcement In numerous public statements over the last four months, Obama Administration officials have made comments that appear to question the importance of and use of state and local …
On Sunday, April 19, 2009, Secretary Napolitano went on CNN’s “State of the Union” and proclaimed that crossing the border illegally is not a crime. This statement left a lot of folks scratching their heads given that U.S. law—the law Napolitano is sworn to uphold—says quite the opposite. Section 8, Title 1325 of the U.S. code clearly states that those who enter the U.S. illegally are committing a crime. This ‘interpretation’ of the law by Secretary Napolitano seems to be the latest in an effort by the Obama Administration to …
It was bad enough that the federal government utterly failed to enforce our interior enforcement immigration laws during the Clinton years and during the first term of George W. Bush. It was only after Michael Chertoff arrived as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and started taking a tough stance on illegal immigration that Immigration and Customs Enforcement began enforcing the laws on the books. Part of this get-tough approach included ending the self-defeating policy called “catch and release” where illegal immigrants were caught, but then released …
In two months on the job, Janet Napolitano, the head of the Department of Homeland Security, has won the war on terror. How? By defining it away. In an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, she refers to her remarks at her own confirmation hearings in January: In my speech, although I did not use the word “terrorism,” I referred to “man-caused” disasters. No one paid much attention to this at the time, but she meant something by it. As she told her German audience, it is “only a …
DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano should be vigorously applauded for telling the good folks at the National Emergency Management Agency mid-year conference that FEMA is and should not be a first responder. Napolitano is dead right that too many Americans see FEMA as the end-all and be-all of disaster response activity. We can forgive Napolitano for not owning up to FEMA’s role in fostering that perception given that it has issued declarations at an ever-increasing pace over the last sixteen years for ever more routine-type disasters. Specifically, the yearly average of …
Chris Strohm reports in Congress Daily that the democratic leadership in the House Homeland Security has finalized their legislative agenda for the year. And the news is not good. After banging the drum for years (like in our recent report with CSIS – Homeland Security 3.0) that oversight of the department needs to be consolidated in the committee, just as the 9/11 Commission recommended, the committee leadership seems intent in every way to undermine the case by incoherent, spotty, and misguided activities. For starters, according Strohm the draft, “left out …
