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Kelly met members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) on Capitol Hill Tuesday, initially softening the Democrats' tone: CHC chairwoman Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-N.M.) said Kelly "tried much harder to hear us and to be more respectful that this is a meeting of a collective group about these issues.”
But members said Thursday that Kelly has been reluctant acknowledge their claims of wrongdoing by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.
CHC members said Kelly was pursuing a policy of "mass deportation," rather than his stated goal of going after dangerous criminals.
"Now that we have factual evidence we can put the secretary in an interesting position, because he’s been rebutting, ‘These are the same policies as the Obama administration,’” said Lujan Grisham.
"Well, guess what?" she added. "We now have data that’s been published out of February that shows it is so negligible the number of individuals that have been picked up, detained, and deported for dangerous felonies, that it’s exactly the opposite."
Lujan Grisham was referring to tracking data released by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) that showed that only five immigrants were charged with firearm or other dangerous criminal acts in February, out of 4,301 immigration cases nationwide.
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