An imperative bill that aims to withhold American aid to countries that refuse to take back citizens who commit crimes while living—often illegally—in the U.S. is floating around in Congress. Incredibly, the U.S. doles out tens of billions of dollars in foreign aid annually yet some recipients of Uncle Sam’s generosity boldly reject federal efforts to repatriate their most deplorable nationals.
This presents a critical problem for the U.S. and its law-abiding citizens because even the most serious felons get released from prison after serving their sentence. When federal authorities try to deport the alien convicts and officials in their homeland decline, the foreign criminals simply get released into American society. This may sound inconceivable but it happens regularly and, predictably, the recidivism rate is alarmingly high. Federal authorities claim their hands are tied when they can’t remove an alien criminal because they’re not allowed to detain them indefinitely.
Here’s an example of the consequences of this absurd system that scatters criminals into communities throughout the nation. An illegal immigrant from Haiti who stabbed a young Connecticut woman to death after completing a 15-year sentence for murder couldn’t be deported by the U.S. government because his island nation wouldn’t take him back—three times! Federal authorities released him and didn’t even bother tracking his whereabouts allowing the con, Jean Jacques, to commit yet another heinous crime. Six months after being released Jacques stabbed 25-year-old Casey Chadwick to death in Norwich, a Connecticut city of about 40,000 residents. It’s important to mention that Connecticut has long protected illegal immigrants with sanctuary policies and even offers them special drivers’ licenses, but the gruesome crime ignited fury and the state’s congressional delegation—all Democrats and avid defenders of sanctuary measures—demanded a federal investigation into the matter.
Haiti, a famously impoverished Caribbean country, gets a boatload of money every year from American taxpayers regardless of who occupies the White House. In fact, since the 2010 earthquake the U.S. government has committed $4.2 billion in assistance in addition to the regular flow of cash that Americans give the island nation. The new measure, introduced this year by Texas Congressman Brian Babin, would certainly have made a difference in the Jacques case, though it’s outrageous by any account that Haiti calls the shots in such a critical matter. “There is absolutely no reason that criminal aliens should be released back onto America’s streets, yet that is exactly what is happening by the thousands each and every year because their countries of origin refuse to take them back,” Babin said in a statement announcing his measure.
The proposed bill (Criminal Alien Deportation Enforcement Act of 2017) upholds the rule of law, the congressman says, and holds these countries accountable by stripping their foreign aid and travel visas if they fail to cooperate. Besides withholding money to uncooperative countries that refuse to take back their criminal alien nationals, the measure includes a mandate that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) submit to Congress a report every three months listing those nations. It also provides the victims of crimes committed by criminal aliens standing in federal court to sue for deportation of such criminal aliens. The congressman mentions Casey Chadwick, the 25-year-old stabbing victim, in his statement.
A federal report, issued by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is also cited by the lawmaker to make a case for his bill. It discloses that 86,288 illegal immigrants who committed 231,074 crimes were released by the Obama administration since 2013. Among them was Jacques, who was listed as a passenger on three Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) flights to Haiti but instead was set free to butcher an innocent young woman.