They were among the nation’s top priorities for deportation,
criminals who were supposed to be sent back to their home countries. But
instead they were released, one by one, in secret across the United
States. Federal officials said that many of the criminals posed little
threat to the public, but did little to verify whether that was true.
It wasn’t.
A (Boston) Globe review of 323 criminals released in New England from 2008 to
2012 found that as many as 30 percent committed new offenses, including
rape, attempted murder, and child molestation — a rate that is markedly
higher than Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have suggested
to Congress in the past.
The names of these criminals have never before been made public
and are coming to light now only because the Globe sued the federal
government for the list of criminals immigration authorities returned to
neighborhoods across the country. A judge ordered the names released in
2013, and the Globe then undertook the work that the federal government
didn’t, scouring court records to find out how many released criminals
reoffended.
The (Boston) Globe has also published, in conjunction with this story, a searchable database of the thousands of names
that were disclosed to the news organization, so that crime victims,
law enforcement officials, and managers of sex offender registries — who
are often unaware of these releases — can find out if the criminals may
still be in the United States. (Read the full story at the Left leaning Boston Globe, here).
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