IMMIGRANT CASES: COURTROOM DOCKETS OVERLOADED

Non-action on rewriting federal immigration laws is clogging
courtrooms along the southern border. Five-year-old Operation
Streamline brings low-level criminal charges against virtually all
illegal immigrants.

This is one of two issues of an at-odds public-policy agenda by the
federal government. Besides the the aggressive Operation Streamline,
there is an equally aggressive agenda to apprehend and prosecute drug
traffickers. Courtroom space was not set up for this one-two sock on
top of normal docket items.

University of Texas at El Paso Professor Josiah Heyman told the
Brownsville Herald, "I think they have literally reached the point in
a number of federal jurisdictions where they have run out of courtroom
space and U.S. Marshals to keep order." Heyman chairs the Department
of Sociology and Anthropology at UTEP.

President Obama has been unable to get a majority in Congress to
address the issue of some 12 million undocumented immigrants in the
U.S. Meanwhile, our teaming with the Mexican government on fighting
the criminal drug trade has been a failure, according to several high
U.S. officials.

Immigration reform and prosecuting hard criminals are two very
different matters.

Immigrants, by and large, are not committing crimes against persons;
however, being here without proper documentation can mean arrest and
prosecution.

Drug dealers, gunrunners and smugglers of humans and other contraband
must certainly be prosecuted.

We are losing on both sides of these two initiatives that the federal
government smacks down on our chain of courtrooms along the border.

Our southern court dockets are overstuffed. We are making moves with
Mexico to fight the drug problem.

Now it is high time members of Congress think of what's best for the
citizens, and not just what's best for their re-election campaigns.

Our top leaders, representing both political parties, must stand for
what is right and solve this immigration question. It is causing so
much angst in America and is causing several negative side-effects,
now including clogging our judicial system with border-related caseloads.