Philadelphia Hotline for ICE Raids Largely Unused



ICE_ArrestLast week, the Washington Post interviewed Philadelphia pastor Father John Olenik regarding the recently created hotline for illegal aliens, maintained by the Philadelphia-based New Sanctuary Movement, an illegal alien advocacy organization. Father Olenik reported the hotline was created earlier this year after ICE announced its intentions to ramp up enforcement efforts against aliens illegally residing in the United States, in order to provide support to illegal aliens involved in or witnessing ICE enforcement raids.

Most notably, however, Father Olenik noted that while the hotline has received calls about individual deportation cases, the city of Philadelphia has not seen any mass raids targeting Central American families. Father Olenik provided the Post with a potential explanation for the lack of ICE enforcement action in the city. “When the raids were first announced in January, we organized to gather letters from over 275 Pennsylvania clergy and religious heads in opposition to the raids, held actions at ICE, and won a Philadelphia City Council resolution condemning the raids. We believe that these organized actions send a direct message to ICE that deportations are not welcome in our city and state, and hopefully can continue to play a preventative role to avoid future mass raids,” explained Olenik.

A more likely explanation for the lack enforcement actions in Philadelphia, however, is not that the New Sanctuary Movement, and related organizations, scared ICE away from carrying out its mandate, but rather that the ramp up of enforcement efforts by the agency itself was a farce. As reported FAIR earlier this year, ICE has only issued final orders of deportation to a mere .001 percent of Central American migrants who have entered the country illegally since 2013, which totals about a mere 121 illegal Central American aliens, nationwide. Additionally, records provided by ICE indicate that removal numbers dropped by over fifty percent in 2015, with only 235,413 deportations, compared to 486,651 in 2014, despite receiving a large increase in the agency’s operating budget. ICE has shown a clear intent to minimize enforcement of the law to the fullest extent possible, and the City of Philadelphia is no exception.

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Content written by Federation for American Immigration Reform staff.

4 Comments

  1. avatar

    If the white working class had any doubt that the Democratic party has a disdain for them, you need look no further than Bill Clinton’s remarks earlier this week about “white non-college educated Americans”. After acknowledging that they “have seen great drops in their income”, he claimed they “need to be brought along to the future”.

    The condescension in that tone, directed to people whose families here most times can be traced back 3 and 4 generations to their immigrant ancestors, basically says you all need to step aside for those who think they have the right to come here because their countries have been economic and political failures. YOU have to pay the price.

    It also ignores the fact that the mass immigration waves of the past 30 years, which the Democrats have encouraged, have gone hand in hand with those “great drops in their income”. And I guess Bill has forgotten that the NAFTA treaty he pushed had the opposite results of what was promised. Ross Perot was not wrong when he talked about that “giant sucking sound” of good American jobs going to Mexico. We went from a small surplus with them to huge deficits every year.

    Those remarks also are a snide suggestion that only those with a college education are the smart guys. Never mind that some plumber is making 50 bucks an hour while some kid with a degree is pouring coffee at Starbucks. Or that the people who go after a STEM degree see the rug pulled out from under them by imported cheap labor.

    But maybe Bill can start a Clinton U. You too can learn to give speeches at a hundred thousand a pop to rich globalists while telling working class Americans they’re whining losers.

    • avatar

      LOL Leland

      From 1990-2000 most of Microsoft’s technicals were like high school or CC educated NW residents….developed WINDOWS 95 and 98….ya know the QUALITY O/S that needed no weekly patches and virus S/W. What have foreign replacements done to MSFT? Destroyed it, IMO. All they make is JUNK now. Reminds me of the foreign automobiles’ price tags today.

  2. avatar
    Raymond Babcock on

    A country with out borders or law enforcement. Is not a country at all.