I admit it: Gregoire confuses the hell out of me on illegal aliens.

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A few days ago, the State Patrol decided to politicize their law enforcement role by refusing to provide finger prints to ICE, statewide, of all booked suspects so that ICE could run those prints for illegal aliens.

State won't agree to national immigration program

By Lornet Turnbull

Seattle Times staff reporter

Related

Washington state has declined to sign an agreement that would allow the fingerprints of people booked into local jails to be checked against a national immigration database.

I had a few thoughts about the Patrol's leadership violating their oath to the people of this state with this misfeasance in office, located here as democrats work to nail down their illegal alien vote.

The money quote?

"We are a state law-enforcement agency, and we don't want to go down the road of being an immigration agency," Patrol spokesman Bob Calkins said. "The chief and the governor are of the same mind on this."

When you say "we are a state law enforcement agency," NOTHING comes after that. ENFORCE THE LAW. Not selectively, but across the board.

The Patrol does not have the right to determine which laws they will enforce and which laws they will blow off. Sending everyone's fingerprints through ICE for comparison to the illegal alien database is certainly NOT an element of "being an immigration agency." It is, instead, a paperwork exercise that will result in deportations by ANOTHER agency. The Patrol's political correctness and fringe-left characterization of this issue goes to the heart of the politician of this issue.

The Chief should be fired.

And if the governor and the Chief are of "the same mind," then she should be fired as well.

And now, 2 days later, we get this?

Gregoire favors deportations as way to cut state's jail costs

Gov. Christine Gregoire wants to deport illegal immigrants who are serving or would serve time in state jails for drug- or property-crime convictions as a way to save more than $9 million in the next two-year budget.

By MANUEL VALDES The Associated Press

Related Archive Gregoire releases slimmed-down state budget

To save money, Gov. Christine Gregoire wants illegal immigrants serving time in state jails deported.

Her proposal estimates that deporting illegal immigrants — who are serving or would serve time in state jails for drug- or property-crime convictions — will save the state more than $9 million in the next two-year budget.

The state faces a $5.7 billion budget deficit over the next 2 ½ years, and Gregoire has proposed a no-new-taxes budget laden with cuts, including about $200 million from the Department of Corrections, the Attorney General's Office and other public-safety programs.

The deportation proposal is modeled after a program in Arizona that has saved that state more than $18.5 million since 2005, said Eldon Vail, secretary of Washington's Department of Corrections.

"It's not an ideal choice. If revenue was there, I'd say have them do their time," Vail said. "Is justice better served? It's a tough question to wrestle with when you don't have resources."

More:

Of course, Gregoire SHOULD favor deportations of illegal aliens BECAUSE IT'S THE LAW. But I'll take it however I can get it.

On one hand, Gregoire apparently opposes this administrative action that first, most of the rest of the country is utilizing and second, that would achieve much of the same goal she's outlining here; while on the other hand, she wants to save millions by deporting illegal alien criminals in many cases before they complete their sentences.

The usual fringe-left suspects whine about it, but no one cares what those opposing this have to say; they offer nothing for any alternative to this plan, just the idea that they love criminals if they're here illegally and, of course, they favor the rights of the illegal alien criminal over the rights of the victim and of society.

Meanwhile, Gregoire continues to confuse me. She refuses to act to deport criminals before they're convicted; but has no difficulty deporting them after they've gone through an expensive and time-consuming trial.

If the outcome... deportation... is going to be the same, then why are we screwing around going through the hassle of deporting these scum AFTER a trial?

Folks, they ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE.

And even though the savings are dramatically understated in the article (if it's 90$ per day for 350 illegals (a figure likely much higher, although we can't, apparently, know that SINCE WE WON'T RUN EVERYONE'S PRINTS THROUGH THE ICE DATABASE) that's a great deal more than $9 million over two years) the baseline for these criminals is that they are here ILLEGALLY.

Rocket science? I don't think so. But this is a confusing dichotomy between what the State Patrol says they're willing to do and what the governor says she wants to do.
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