It was more than a bit surprising, but very gratifying, to read the June 7 editorial that takes the Obama administration to task for its indifferent attitude to deporting criminal aliens (“Our View: Report shows deportation of criminals falling short”).

The editorial should have focused more on the details of the administration’s lack of enforcement, instead of drifting off into cautionary comments on “anti-immigrant sentiment.”

This issue had previously been reported on by the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based research institute whose findings conclude that immigration reductions are needed.

Jessica Vaughan, the center’s director of policy studies, reported on the 36,007 criminal aliens released by the Obama administration in her May 2014 Backgrounder: “ICE Document Details 36,000 Criminal Alien Releases in 2013.”

Also, Vaughan testified in a report to a U.S. congressional committee that 5,700 (16 percent) of the 36,007 criminal aliens released in 2013 had, as of September 2014, been arrested again (“Examining the Adequacy and Enforcement of Our Nation’s Immigration Laws,” U.S. House Judiciary Committee, Feb. 3, 2015).

The release of criminal aliens is totally unnecessary, and preventable as there is a remedy under the law that the administration should be taking to facilitate the deportation of criminal aliens. The administration is required – it is not an option – to stop issuing visas to those countries that refuse to take back their criminal aliens. When those countries subsequently take back their criminal aliens, then we can resume granting visas to those countries (Title 8, U.S. Code, Section 1253[d]).

This should not be happening; we have the means and the mechanisms to deport criminal aliens. Not to do so is, in itself, criminal.

Bob Casimiro

Bridgton