Despite Recent Record Spending, Congress Failed to Fund Detention Space to Hold Captured Illegals From Terror-Sponsoring Countries

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CNSnews:


Despite Recent Record Spending, Congress Failed to Fund Detention Space to Hold Captured Illegals From Terror-Sponsoring Countries
Friday, August 20, 2010
By Penny Starr, Senior Staff Writer

(CNSNews.com) – Even as Congress increased overall federal spending from a then-record $2.6 trillion in fiscal 2006 to $3.6 trillion in fiscal 2010, it only appropriated enough funds for the Department of Homeland Security to provide a fraction of the additional 40,000 detention spaces for illegal aliens that had been authorized by an immigration law approved in 2004.

Because it lacked adequate detention space, DHS says it was forced over the last three years to release hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens it had caught and were being processed for deportation. Among these, as CNSNews.com recently reported, were 481 illegal aliens from state sponsors of terror and other "countries of interest" that DHS caught and released in fiscal years 2007-2009 and who are now fugitives whose wherabouts is unknown.

These 481 caught-and-released fugitive illegal aliens from terror sponsors and "countries of interest" include 97 citizens of Nigeria, the country from which Northwest Flight 253 hijacker Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab hailed. They also include 8 citizens of Yemen, the country where Abdulmutallab was recruited by al Qaeda, as well as 87 Pakistanis, 34 Lebanese, 29 Iranians, 22 Somalians, 14 Sudanese, 13 Syrians, 8 Algerians, 4 Afghans, and 2 Saudia Arabians.

Syria, Iran and Sudan (along with Cuba) are designated by the U.S. State Department as sponsors of terrorism. Nationals of the other countries were singled out by DHS for enhanced security scrutiny when boarding U.S.-bound flights after the attempted Christmas Day bombing of Northwest Flight 253.

Yet in recent years when nationals of these countries were found to be illegally in the United States, they were not automatically detained while undergoing the deportation process--allowing some of them to become fugitives.