The Victims Of Illegal Aliens Finally Have A V.O.I.C.E.

The “Office for Victims of Crimes Committed by Removable Aliens,” now called “Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE),” was created by an executive order on immigration enforcement on January 25 and enhanced in a memorandum by DHS secretary John Kelly on February 20. VOICE is a very appropriate name for this office. For years American families victimized by illegal aliens have been ignored. Because of the misuse of “privacy” rules and indifference, they have been unable to find out whether the criminals who attacked their family members were in the country legally or illegally, or even whether the aliens were incarcerated, deported, or set free.

This class of victims finally joins the ranks of those who have suffered loss at the hands of citizen criminals. Funds for this effort are channeled through programs that previously aided criminal aliens under the Obama administration. Taxpayer funds will no longer be available for the following:

• In the past two years, the Obama Administration spent $9 million of taxpayer money to provide attorneys to illegal aliens.

• DHS had previously offered hotlines to help illegal aliens seeking executive amnesty and enable complaints against those seeking to enforce U.S. immigration law, and even opened an illegal alien advocate office. 

• Even today, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) still advertises safe zones (“sensitive locations”) – such as school bus stops, health clinics and parades – where illegal aliens will be free from enforcement actions.

There are other victim assistance programs available through the Office for Victims of Crime (OVC). This is a program administered by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). The Crime Victims Fund was established under the 1984 Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) to help victims of crime. One of the goals of this funding was to keep crime victims appraised of the progress of prosecutions involving their assailant. I administered one of these programs that operated on a county-wide basis and can testify as to their advocacy for victims and the assistance they provide.

Apparently the same level of assistance was not extended to federal prosecutions involving criminal aliens.  Indeed, under Obama the deportation of criminal aliens was replaced by their release back into society.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement released 90,000 illegal aliens back onto the streets that were deemed as criminal threats in 2015. The massive release was a result of Pres. Obama’s Priority Enforcement Program that puts the focus only on criminal aliens who pose a “serious” threat.

In fiscal year 2015 ICE encountered 152,393 illegal criminal aliens, mostly through local jails, but only charged 64,116. According to Jessica Vaughan, Director of Policy Studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, around 88,000 were not even processed for deportation.

If the crime occurred in one of the 300 sanctuary cities, the crime may not have been reported to ICE and the suspect alien not remanded to federal custody as required;  the numbers quoted above may be greater as the accuracy of these statistics is dependent upon the cooperation of local jurisdictions.

Hopefully this situation has been rectified by Trump’s executive order and the issue of sanctuary cities will soon be addressed.