{"id":7753,"date":"2014-09-30T15:31:00","date_gmt":"2014-09-30T19:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/live-immigrationreform.pantheonsite.io\/?p=7753"},"modified":"2018-12-28T14:42:32","modified_gmt":"2018-12-28T19:42:32","slug":"holder-quits-after-gutting-immigration-enforcement-and-rule-of-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/2014\/09\/30\/holder-quits-after-gutting-immigration-enforcement-and-rule-of-law\/","title":{"rendered":"Holder Quits After Gutting Immigration Enforcement and Rule of Law"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"EricHolderAGNominee\"<\/a>Attorney General Eric Holder is retiring and leaving behind<\/a> an immigration system he helped put in ruins. \u00a0No replacement has been announced. Although there is little reason to expect that his replacement will be committed to upholding immigration laws, it will be hard for anyone to be more antagonistic than Holder.<\/p>\n

In 2009, Mr. Holder was sworn in to be the chief law enforcement officer of the United States government. In practice, he was the chief dismantler<\/i><\/a> of laws, notably immigration laws. During his tenure at the Department of Justice, Holder relentlessly undermined immigration enforcement through dubious interpretation of statutes, intimidation and dereliction of duties.<\/p>\n

Mr. Holder gave President Obama what he needed: flimsy legal pretenses<\/a> on how the administration could bypass the laws enacted by Congress using so-called prosecutorial discretion. Until Holder got to town, prosecutorial discretion had been regarded as the latitude afforded to judges to provide relief from deportation in rare and exceptional circumstances.\u00a0 The Attorney General interpreted it as a license to simply ignore laws and applied it broadly as a foundational tool used by the Obama administration to selectively choose which aliens, if any, would be removed and which laws it would enforce.\u00a0 Millions of illegal aliens are now being granted administrative stays of removal, deportations are dropping, and enforcement of the laws as Congress intended is disappearing faster than Lois Lerner\u2019s emails.<\/p>\n

Mr. Holder retooled the DOJ into a blunt instrument of intimidation to be used against states daring to defy the Obama administration\u2019s non-enforcement agenda. \u00a0Shortly after President Obama took office and weakened many immigration enforcement programs, Arizona put in place its own initiative (SB 1070) to help it combat the cost and impact of illegal immigration. Other states followed Arizona\u2019s lead but, like Arizona, all faced the iron-fisted tactics of Holder\u2019s DOJ which successfully squashed local efforts by suing or threating lawsuits.<\/p>\n

FAIR\u2019s comprehensive report, President Obama\u2019s Record of Dismantling of Immigration Enforcement<\/i><\/a> chronicles an aggressive, concentrated campaign by Mr. Holder in 2010-2012 to shut down all state action.<\/p>\n