ICE Outnumbered 40,000 to 1

Terrance Jeffrey:

"An immigration system that forces people into the shadows of our society or leaves them prey to criminals is a system that needs to be changed," President Bush said last week at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast.

He was right that the system needs to be changed. But he was wrong that it forces people into the shadows.

On Monday, throngs of reportedly more than 1 million people nationwide, many of them undoubtedly illegal aliens, demonstrated just how wrong the president was by massing in our public squares to demand U.S. citizenship for illegal aliens.

Illegal aliens are not forced into the shadows of our society. They parade in the streets.

It may be more accurately argued that U.S. immigration law-enforcement officers are forced into the shadows.

When The Washington Times asked an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official how many of the demonstrators were illegal aliens, the ICE official said, "It's just impossible to know unless you sent agents to the rallies and asked every single person to prove they are legal residents."

The official told the Times, as the paper put it, that ICE "could not use its 5,500 investigators assigned to myriad cases to question more than 1 million protestors."

Talk about being outnumbered!

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There is more. The problem is compounded by the lack of seriousness in enforcing the rule of law when it comes to immigration. It is this lack of seriousness that has allowed the numbers to swell into the millions. Passing new laws that will also not be enforced is not the answer.