Democrats accuse ICE of targeting Dreamers while DHS highlights gang members, child rapists arrested this week
EXCLUSIVE: The Department of Homeland Security fired back at the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee following a dispute over the proportion of DACA recipients being picked up by the agency amid President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda.
Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin, who is the longtime sponsor of the related DREAM Act in successive Congresses, lambasted Secretary Kristi Noem earlier Tuesday, demanding to know why so many beneficiaries of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program were being deported.
DHS also responded to an exchange Noem had with Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., over his concern that ICE or CBP agents would be dispatched to polling places in November. She responded by asking him whether Democrats have plans to facilitate illegal immigrant voting.
"Contrary to what Senators Dick Durbin and Alex Padilla said in Secretary Noem’s Senate hearing today, nearly 70% of illegal aliens arrested by ICE have criminal records," Deputy Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis told Fox News Digital.
"Just yesterday, ICE arrested MS-13 gang members, child predators, and drug traffickers," she said.
"These are the public safety threats we are removing from American communities every single day."
During Noem’s exchange with Durbin, the retiring Democrat demanded to know why ICE arrested 261 DACA recipients in the past year and deported 86 of them.
He also criticized her for allowing her agency to deport a Mexican man living in Northridge, Illinois, whose daughter was dying of cancer.
"Finally, he [was] returned for a court hearing. His daughter lived to see that hearing where the court said he was treated unfairly by your agency. And she died three days later. I was at a memorial service. Is that really necessary? Was he a violent criminal?" Durbin asked.
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Noem replied that DHS enforces the laws as passed by Congress and that if an individual has a final order of removal, that is the proper procedure.
"If you don’t like the law, I would suggest you change the law," she said.
Durbin also claimed 85% of the 400,000 illegal immigrants arrested by ICE had no violent criminal record beyond immigration offenses. Noem pointed out that reports citing that number earlier this year did not factor in several classifications of similarly serious crimes, such as drug trafficking, embezzlement and assault.
She said that when all were factored together, the true percentage was closer to 70%.
DHS followed up by providing Fox News Digital with an exclusive list of dangerous illegal immigrants arrested in the past day, implying that Democrats are not concerned with their rap sheets or victims.
In one case, Gasper Florentino, an illegal immigrant from Mexico and an MS-13 gang member, was convicted in Fairfax, Virginia, of aggravated sexual battery of a victim who was 13 to 14 years old and rape by force, threat or intimidation.
In Durbin’s Illinois, ICE arrested Juan Leonardo Alvarado-Gonzalez of Guatemala, who was convicted in Cook County of predatory criminal sexual assault of a child.
Yancarlos Marte-Morel of the Dominican Republic was convicted of conspiracy to distribute fentanyl by a federal court in Massachusetts.
Back in Virginia, a Vietnamese national named Minh Tai Son Tran was arrested following convictions on three counts of burglary — forced entry to a residence.