The Obama Administration Does Something Right?

I'm waiting for Mark Krikorian to tell me what the catch is, but on the face of it, this sounds like good news:

The Obama administration is expanding a program initiated by President George W. Bush aimed at checking the immigration status of virtually every person booked into local jails. In four years, the measure could result in a tenfold increase in illegal immigrants who have been convicted of crimes and identified for deportation, current and former U.S. officials said. ...

The program began as a pilot effort in October and operates in 48 counties across the country, including Fairfax County. This year, fingerprints from 1 million local jail bookings will be screened under the program. It also operates Dallas, Houston, Miami, Boston and Phoenix, according to ICE, and will expand to Los Angeles this year and nearly all local jails by the end of 2012.

Next step: extending the checks to all person arrested, not just those convicted. It is already the case that when a person encounters law enforcement - that is, when police stop a person for legal cause - the police check whether there are arrest warrants pending for that person. We should work toward developing the technologies to ensure that a check for immigration status is part of that process. If the person is found to be present in the United States illegally, they would then be turned over to the immigration authorities for deportation.

In other words: the government need not convict the illegal alien of some other crime first in order to remove him. Removal is not a punishment for crime. Removal is the legal consequence of being present in the United States without legal right - much as ejection is the legal consequence of trespass. A movie theater does not give a trial to people caught in the theater without a ticket. It sends a security officer to walk them off the premises. Immigration violations should be treated in the same way, with of course exceptions available for humanitarian reasons.