No kidding! The lax efforts to apprehend illegals and illegal criminals is maddening! Our streets and towns are not safe with these criminals roaming around. Lock and load! 

Some 88,277 illegal aliens officially classified as “criminal threats” were released without being deported in 2015, official statistics from the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have shown.

Internal ICE figures show that in 2015, ICE detained 152,393 illegal immigrants labeled a criminal threat, but only charged 64,116.

All the rest were not processed for deportation, according to the Center for Immigration Studies’ Jessica Vaughan. The numbers are even worse for those who ICE asks local police and sheriffs to detain but never collect.

In terms of the Obama administration’s “Priority Enforcement Program,” officials work with local police to arrest and deport criminal immigrants.

In reality, that amounts to a phone call from ICE requesting local authorities hold the suspect for 48 hours after they have been arranged to be released.

According to the Washington Examiner, sheriffs from around the country say that just 35–40 percent of those held are ever seized by ICE, even after they’ve been released.

Richard W. Stanek, sheriff of Hennepin County in Minneapolis, said he had 75 illegals ICE wanted, but the agency only picked up about 35 percent. “And these are people that they want,” he told the Washington Examiner.

Susan Benton, sheriff of Florida’s Highlands County, said, “mine would be much, much lower.” Worse, she added, many are seized and sent to a federal facility in Miami and immediately released and return to her county.

Benton said she wants to help ICE and hold illegal immigrants longer, but can’t legally. Often the result is more crime from the suspects and questions about why her department’s jail frees them.

Read more: News Observer Online