Napolitano: White House to Push Immigration Reform “Until We Get it Over the Finish Line”

By • 3/26/10 • Categorized as Immigration News,Immigration Reform,Phoenix

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano - File photo: The National Guard/Flickr

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano. (File photo: The National Guard/Flickr)

The Obama administration will continue to push for immigration reform until it’s done, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told a packed lecture hall at Arizona State University Thursday, according to local media reports.

“We’re going to keep pushing this until we get it over the finish line,” the former Arizona governor said, according to The Arizona Republic, four days after a massive march for immigration reform on The Mall in Washington.

Immigration reform, she added, “is the most important issue for President Obama and of course this country,” according to news channel ABC 15.

However, protesters outside the lecture hall said the Democratic White House had done nothing to improve current conditions for immigrants in Arizona. “It hasn’t changed anything here in Maricopa County, everything has continued,” Carlos Garcia told the channel.

The demonstrators demanded that Napolitano, who supervises Immigration and Customs Enforcement, “control” Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who is under investigation for alleged abuse of power and has been accused of committing racial profiling when enforcing federal immigration law through an agreement with that agency.

Napolitano also criticized a bill making its way through the Arizona legislature that would make being in the state as an undocumented immigrant a violation of state trespassing laws.

“I thought I was right when I vetoed it the first time, I thought I was right the second time, I thought I was right the third time,” she said, according to the Daily Sun.

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    • http://www.kolkenlaw.com Matthew Kolken

      How man hundreds of thousands will the President and Secretary deport before they reach the “finish line?”

    • ilias

      All people documented or not are a fabric of society. I can’t imagine living in an isolated world, nor in an unmerciful one. The car I drive was not invented by me, nor the fuel refined by me, nor the potatoe or tomatoe in the field plucked by me. I enjoyed the hard labour of all people and hopefully gave my labour out to others too: citizens, immigrants, foreigners, and undocumented all alike. Now has come the time to correct the papers and count these people as part of the fabric of society. Can we deport all the parents, or children of US citizens? If the answer is no, then in my humblest opinion they should be counted and identified and given legality in the country in which we all have put our energies. God’s air is free, we should not have “exclusive” group rights. For those who feel the immigration laws were broken, an appeal is made to their sense of Mercy and Kindness… Many may have broken it inadvertantly, many may have been forced to flee their lands, for whatever reasons. There may be millions of different stories and reasons. We all need to help each other to build a better world. We are all interdependant.

    • Jim B

      Immigration Reform is dead.