Conference examines Homeland Security's handling of immigration

Published: 2008-05-21

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Five years after the Department of Homeland Security was created as an umbrella agency, its handling of immigration-related situations came in for harsh criticism at an immigration law and policy conference May 20. "DHS's increasingly aggressive immigration enforcement treats all immigrants as dangerous criminals," said Lisa Powell, chief investigative counsel for the oversight subcommittee of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. "It was a bad idea when it was started, it was poorly executed and it's still a bad idea," said Charles Kuck, managing partner of an Atlanta and Miami immigration law firm who is president-elect of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Powell and Kuck were among panelists at a daylong conference co-sponsored by the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, known as CLINIC, the Migration Policy Institute and Georgetown University's Law Center. Other sessions at the conference addressed the current state of immigration legislation and policy and the role immigration issues are likely to play in the November election.

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