In a flabbergasting request, a coalition of Mexican lawmakers has asked the United States to stop deporting illegal immigrants who have been convicted of serious crimes in American courts.
The preposterous demand was made at a recent southern California conference in which the mayors of four Mexican cities that border the U.S. gathered to discuss cross-border issues.
The only American mayor who attended the biannual event was San Diego’s Jerry Sanders, evidently because his city hosted it this year at a fancy downtown hotel.
Among the cross-border topics that were addressed at the conference was the deportation of Mexican citizens who have committed violent crimes in the U.S. The felons are persona non grata in their communities, say the mayors of Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez, Nogales and Nuevo Laredo. They want U.S. officials to stem the deportation of such convicts to their cities, according to a local newspaper report that covered the conference.
To support the request, the mayor (Jose Reyes Ferriz) of Mexico’s most violent city, Ciudad Juarez, pointed out that of 80,000 people deported to his community in the past three years nearly 30,000 had committed serious crimes in the U.S. Around 7,000 had served sentences for rape and 2,000 for murder. The criminal deportees have contributed to the escalating drug-cartel violence in his city, Mayor Ferriz said, so he wants the U.S. to make other arrangements when prison sentences are completed.
If this seems unbelievable, consider that a few years ago Mexico’s government formally complained that too many Mexicans had been repatriated from the U.S. and that the entire country was overwhelmed with demands for housing, jobs and schools. Various Mexican legislators publicly chastised the U.S. for sending illegal immigrants back, explaining that the country could not accommodate the “repatriated.”
The Obama Administration seems to be heeding to Mexico’s request by openly halting the deportation of hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants. Additionally, the administration has a “backdoor amnesty” plan to legalize millions of undocumented aliens in case Congress doesn’t pass legislation to do it.
