ICE Director Defends Returning $113M in Funds for Detention, Removal of Illegals

(CNSNews.com) - The director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Thursday defended her agency’s decision to return $113 million in funds allocated for the detention and removal of illegal immigrants in FY 2015.

“Your organization operates with limited resources, and yet, in fiscal year 2015, you gave back to the Department of Homeland Security $113 million in funds that were specifically appropriated for detention and removal. Why did you give this money back given the problems that were decided by Mr. Smith and the fact as Mr. Conyers noted you have limited resources to begin with?” House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) asked at a committee hearing on ICE oversight.

“Our statistics alone with respect to the beds, those are filled with people with one or more convictions that we are preparing to remove from the country. Last year, we had some beds that were not filled. This year, we have the opposite problem. We have more people in beds than we can afford, but we’re working very hard to manage that problem through the end of the fiscal year,” ICE Director Sarah Saldana explained.

More