By Debbie Schlussel
A story that was atop all four major newspapers I read this morning was this one:

* Immigration Slows In Face of Economic Downturn (Wall Street Journal Headline)
* Fewer Immigrants Crossing Borders (Detroit Free Press)
* Immigration Boom Slows with Economy (Associated Press)

While it’s a tiny silver lining in bad economic times in America, I don’t see why we’re supposed to be happy that it takes severe economic suffering at the hands of the economy to stop serious economic suffering at the hands of illegal aliens taking American jobs.

Why is it that a bad economy–NOT ICE (Immigration & Customs Enforcement)–must do the job of stopping the illegal alien problem in our midst? Maybe we should hire the former execs at Lehman Brothers to take over ICE. I hear they’re looking for jobs. (Full disclosure: My cousin, Cookie Rabin Lehman, married one of the Lehmans–but that was when the original Lehmans were running the show at their investment house, and they knew what they were doing.)
And then there’s this latest indication that ICE still doesn’t care about doing its job. A number of demoralized ICE agents (which seems to be every single ICE agent, save the few in top management positions at ICE headquarters and select Special Agent in Charge slots) have contacted me, upset that the illegal aliens they rounded up in Mississippi were released into the Great American Abyss in anticipation of the hurricane.
Here’s a sampling of what I’ve been hearing from agents:

Several, if not all, of the illegals rounded up in the Mississippi worksite raids a few weeks ago were let go due to concerns over housing them in the face of a hurricane and not having power. Also, there are more and more of these phony show worksite raids happening, all for the cameras. Each one is handled worse than the last. ICE bureaucrats at headquarters in Washington are hijacking each of the cases from the case agents and running the enforcement actions as they see fit, not as the case agent who investigated it sees fit–all for positive media coverage and spin. Then the aliens are largely released. This is the ICE M.O.

Hmmm . . . every time there’s an impending natural disaster, we need to release lawbreakers and criminals onto America? Funny, I didn’t see the non-alien prisons sending criminals free.
ICE . . . Your tax dollars at (make)work.
***
On another note: The ICE Princess a/k/a Julie L. Myers, the incompetent chieftess of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, announced the guilty plea of a Muslim alien smuggler based in Mexico.
But this raises two points:
1) Why should we care about this, if ICE agents are forced to do stupid worksite alien raids and then release all aliens captured? Why should we care about this, if ICE just releases aliens anytime an impending hurricane is about to arrive?
2) I thought we were told that no Islamic terrorists came into America through Mexico. Think all of this guy’s smuggled Muslim aliens have the best of intentions for America? If you do, I have some land in the Sahara desert to sell you. Aliens came from places like terrorist state Sudan and the United Arab Emirates, where the 9/11 hijackers all had bank accounts.

Thanks, America, for Letting Me Sneak in, Stick & Stay
More:

A Ghanaian man pleaded guilty today to charges of conspiracy and alien smuggling in connection with his role in smuggling East Africans into the United States. . . .
According to plea documents, Mohammed Kamel Ibrahim, a/k/a “Hakim,” 27, a native of Ghana and naturalized citizen of Mexico, admitted he operated an alien-smuggling organization in Mexico that moved unauthorized aliens across the southern U.S. border since as early as 2005. Based in Mexico City, Ibrahim’s organization was part of an elaborate smuggling pipeline that specialized in smuggling aliens from East Africa. Spanning multiple continents, the smuggling network included recruiters in Africa, smugglers in South and Central America, a corrupt embassy employee in Belize, and transporters, guides and money collectors in Mexico. At various times, the network’s smuggling routes included the countries of Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, Kenya, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, Cuba, Brazil, Bolivia, Panama, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico.
Ibrahim admitted that in 2006 he began working with Sampson Lovelace Boateng, a Belize-based alien smuggler and document provider. According to plea documents, between June 2006 and February 2007, Ibrahim admitted he and Boateng conspired to smuggle unauthorized aliens to the United States by providing the aliens with fraudulently obtained Mexican visas. These documents, which Boateng obtained through a corrupt employee of the Mexican embassy in Belize and sold for $500 each, enabled East African aliens to travel into Mexico and reach a point where they could be smuggled across the southern U.S. border by Ibrahim’s Mexico City-based organization, according to information in plea documents. After housing the aliens for several days or weeks in Mexico, Ibrahim admitted he smuggled the aliens to the United States by various means, including by concealing the aliens for more than 12 hours in the sleeper compartments of commercial buses. By the time they reached the United States, aliens paid Ibrahim and Boateng smuggling fees totaling approximately $5,000, according to plea documents. In pleading guilty, both Ibrahim and Boateng admitted to smuggling between 25 and 99 aliens into the United States.
Plea documents show that Ibrahim and his co-conspirators used a number of legitimate services to carry out the alien-smuggling conspiracy. The organization received payments via money transfers, sent fraudulent travel documents through commercial shipping services and conducted business by e-mail. . . .
“With a network that included East Africa and South and Central America, Mohammed Ibrahim was willing to bring anyone into the United States for profit,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Friedrich.

Kudos to the hard-working ICE agents who caught Mohammed Ibrahim.
But what good is it, unless you deport all of the people you know he smuggled in . . . instead of releasing them from detention facilities, every time there’s a hurricane coming?