The American Pundit

According to sources for Michelle Malkin, yes. Three cheers for open-borders bipartisanship.

I hope Barack Obama remembered to thank George Bush on behalf of his illegal alien aunt this week. The lame-duck Republican president did the Democratic president-elect a generous — and dangerous — favor right before Election Day: Putting politics above homeland security, the Bush administration ordered immigration authorities across the country to halt all deportation enforcement actions until after the campaign season was over.

According to my sources, the Bush administration issued a 72-hour cease-and-desist order to all fugitive apprehension teams to spare Obama embarrassment over his Kenyan half-aunt, Zeituni Onyango. The Associated Press had reported on Nov. 1 that Onyango was a deportation evader – one of an estimated 700,000 illegal alien absconders who have ignored orders from immigration judges to leave the country. The wire report mentioned that the Department of Homeland Security distributed “an unusual nationwide directive within Immigrations and Customs Enforcement requiring any deportations prior to Tuesday’s election to be approved at least at the level of ICE regional directors.”

But the politicized order was even worse than the AP reported. The deportation process wasn’t simply slowed down for public relations reasons and fear of a media backlash. The process was completely frozen.

She has more details in her syndicated column. Normally I’d question Bush protecting Obama from negative publicity, but what does he have to lose?

As Malkin points out, he’s a lame duck. Plus, he was never really so gung-ho about enforcing immigration laws to begin with. Onyango getting deported right before the election would make it appear as if Bush was using law enforcement for political purposes and would only further damage whatever legacy he has.

I tell you, I certainly won’t miss Bush’s immigration policies. Of course, they’re going to be replaced by more open-borders crap from Obama, so there’s no actual improvement. It’s going to be a long four years.