There is a growing disconnect between get-tough-at-the-border political rhetoric and public policy that has not been sufficiently funded by the Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection division. The result, according to the Washington Time’s Jerry Seper, is local communities devoting precious law enforcement resources to rounding up undocumented immigrants.

A report by the U.S.-Mexico Border Counties Coalition, a group of 24 border counties, said that the counties spent nearly $2 billion between 1999 and 2006 on finding and prosecuting undocumented immigrants. And with a comprehensive immigration reform bill off the table until the next administration, there is no end in sight for law enforcement’s dilemma of either obeying national immigration law or spending their time and money on more pressing criminal concerns.  Read Seper here.

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