DHS official to resign after hundreds of illegal immigrants released from jails

DHS official to resign after hundreds of illegal immigrants released from jails:
Gary Mead, the executive associate director for the HomelandSecurity Department’s immigration enforcement and removaloperations, told colleagues this week that he will resign at theend of April. An email circulated to his co-workers was obtained bythe AP, who broke the story on Wednesday.
According to the AP, Mead sent the email to his Immigration andCustoms Enforcement (ICE) coworkers on Tuesday evening, only hoursafter news first broke that hundreds of detainees held in DHSimmigration jails were being released in advance of looming budget cuts all butcertain to impact a number of federal departments.
Within an hour of the AP's story, ICE spokesperson GillianChristensen called reports of Mead's resignation "inaccurate and misleading." Mead'sretirement, she said, has been long planned for the end ofApril.
When the story first broke, Christensen told the AssociatedPress that immigrants in jails across the US were being"placed on an appropriate, morecost-effective form of supervised release” due in part tothe sequester budget cuts expected to save the country over $1trillion during the next decade. The detainees in question, shesaid, would not be those “whopose a significant threat to public safety."
Following news of the decision, House Homeland SecurityCommittee Chairman Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said the decision“reflects the lack of resourceprioritization," and personally wrote to ICE Director JohnMorton to call the maneuver "indicative of the Department [of HomelandSecurity]’s weak stance on national security."
“All I can say is look, we’redoing our very best to minimize the impacts of sequester,”Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said in a pressbriefing Monday. “But there’sonly so much I can do. I’m supposed to have 34,000 detention bedsfor immigration. How do I pay for those?” Under budget cuts,Napolitano said her department “would not be able to maintain the 34,000detention beds as required by Congress."
The announcement of Mead’s resignation comes only two days afterword of the scandal first got wind. He didn’t act fast enough tothwart attacks from critics, however, who took two differentarguments in assaulting the decision to put hundreds of non-violentoffenders back on the street. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio)said to CBS News that the decision was “outrageous,” adding, “I can’t believe that they can’t find thekind of savings they need out of that department short of lettingcriminals go free.” Others took the opposite stance,attacking DHS for detaining hundreds of illegal immigrants forreasons that now suddenly don’t matter.
“The people being releasedtoday are people ICE could have released months – or in some cases,years – ago,” Mohammad Abdollahi, member of the Dreamer-ledNational Immigrant Youth Alliance, said to the Huffington Post.
“It shouldn’t take amanufactured crisis in Washington to prompt our immigrationagencies to actually take steps towards using government resourceswisely or keeping families together,” Carolina Canizales ofUnited We Dream added to the New York Times.
As the scandal intensified, even the White House tried todistance itself from ICE’s policies. "This was a decision made by career officialsat ICE without any input from the White House, as a result offiscal uncertainty over the continuing resolution, as well aspossible sequestration," White House press secretary JayCarney said Wednesday.