No worries for illegal residents

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In a little-noticed statement, Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner James Ziglar has said that most of the millions of illegal aliens living in this country do not have to worry about the U.S. government enforcing the law and deporting them.

"No one likes the idea that people came into the country illegally, but it's not practical or reasonable to think that you're going to be able to round them all up and send them home," Ziglar said at a May 23 press conference that he held with Javier Moctezuma Barragan, the Mexican undersecretary of population and migrant services, and Felipe de Jesus Preciado Coronado, commissioner of Mexico's migration institute. The press conference was held at the Tucson, Ariz., Border Patrol office.

Estimates of the number of aliens living illegally in this country vary from 7 million to 11 million. The INS estimates 7-8 million.

An INS spokesman said that Ziglar merely repeated what other INS commissioners, including Clinton Commissioner Doris Meissner, have said in recent years.

"I haven't heard any controversy over his remarks," he said. "Commissioner Ziglar was recognizing the long-standing reality. The priorities for our 1,950 internal enforcement agents are deporting criminal aliens, combating trafficking. ... We don't have the resources to pull those agents away from those priorities."

The Arizona Daily Star, the only newspaper to report Ziglar's comments, paraphrased the INS director as saying that deportation of all illegal aliens would "have too severe an impact on the U.S. economy."

Spokesmen for congressional Republican leaders on immigration – House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., House immigration subcommittee Chairman George Gekas, R-Pa., and Senate immigration subcommittee ranking member Sam Brownback, R-Kan. – had no immediate reaction to Ziglar's comments during Memorial Day week, which Congress took off. The spokesmen were not aware of Ziglar's comment.

Barragan said at the press conference, "The mobility of people has been a reality throughout human history. Only by recognizing that reality, through agreements, through laws, can we avoid what is happening."

Ziglar said that he wanted to make policing the border more efficient to free up resources to focus on the most serious threats to the United States.

"We need to set up a regime where we don't have to spend so much of our time and effort in enforcement activities dealing with people who are not terrorists, who are not threats to our national security, who are economic refugees," he said.

Ziglar discussed the installation of six 30-foot beacons in the Yuma area that illegal migrants can see from up to 5 miles away. The beacons would allow the illegal immigrants to call for help from the Border Patrol – which could then deport them. Though the beacons have been up for several months, no one has yet used them. Since Oct. 1 of last year, the Border Patrol has discovered the bodies of 124 dead migrants in the mostly desert regions of its Yuma and Tucson sectors.

Ziglar also announced the use of pepperball launchers by Border Patrol agents. The weapons are supposed to disable violent migrants without hurting them, he said.

The next day, at an appearance in San Ysidro, Calif., Ziglar said that the INS would establish more commuter lanes to help people who make daily trips across the border. "If it's hard for people to move across the border fluidly, that is going to have a severe economic impact on the economy of this community," he said. He said that a system of rapid entry, with minimal inspection times, for Mexican trucks would be expanded around the country.

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