A war of words over immigrant-smuggling cases between a Vista congressman and the top San Diego federal prosecutor is flaring up.
Last week, Rep. Darrell Issa released a document that he said came from a Border Patrol officer critical of U.S. Attorney Carol Lam's decisions over the prosecution of those charged with smuggling illegal immigrants.
On Monday, Lam said the document was misleading and was not an official report. Yesterday, Issa accused Lam of “willful disregard” of immigrant-smuggling cases.
Issa, a Republican, has long been critical of how Lam prioritizes cases, demanding a focus on illegal immigration and “zero tolerance” for smugglers.
The document he released Thursday claimed that only 6 percent of 289 smuggling suspects caught by El Cajon-based agents in the 12 months ending in September 2004 were prosecuted, causing low morale among agents.
Issa won't say who wrote the memo or why, but said it mirrored the attitude of agents across the country.
Lam replied that border crimes are a high priority for her office and said half of the 110 lawyers in her office work on such cases.
“Representative Issa has been misled,” she said Monday. “The document he calls a 'Border Patrol report' is actually an old internal Border Patrol document, relating to a single substation, that has been substantially altered and passed off as an official report.”
Many of the conclusions in it are “editorial comments” by an “unidentified individual” not approved by higher-ups, she said.
In a letter yesterday, Issa said Lam's statement “misses the mark and exhibits a willful disregard” for the smuggling suspects arrested by the Border Patrol. The document “is an embarrassment to your office as the memo speaks with such candor about barriers to prosecution that it could not be embraced and released publicly as a report representing the views of Border Patrol management.”
Yesterday, Lam issued another statement: “The fact that our office has prosecuted well over 10,000 felony immigration cases over the past five years speaks for itself.”
While overall prosecution of immigration crimes in San Diego has decreased recently, immigrant-smuggling cases have increased, with 604 people accused of that crime in the fiscal year that ended in September, compared with 463 five years earlier, according to independent researchers.
Onell Soto: (619) 293-1280; onell.soto@uniontrib.com
