Bush's Immigration Enforcement: Epic Failure

Editor's note: this is cross-posted from the America's Voice blog ...

Today we're releasing a new report that outlines in stark detail why the Bush Administration had it backwards when it came to immigration enforcement. 

The report finds that in three key areas- immigration law enforcement, labor law enforcement, and support for state and local police- the Bush Administration focused its resources on undocumented workers rather than high value targets like unscrupulous employers and dangerous criminals. 

Two years ago, then-Secretary of DHS, Michael Chertoff, promised to crack down on unscrupulous employers, saying:

"[The] days of treating employers who violate these laws by giving them the equivalent of a corporate parking ticket -- those days are gone. It's now felonies, jail time, fines and forfeitures." 

Well, the new report shows that in 2007, the same year Chertoff made his claim, 98% of all workplace immigration arrests and 89% of all workplace criminal arrests were of undocumented workers, rather than their employers.  The following year, 2008, was more of the same - 98% of all workplace immigration arrests and 87% of workplace criminal arrests that year were of the worker, not the employer. 

In case we've forgotten, these aren't just abstract statistics.