ImmigrationNapolitano calls for immigration reform, acknowledges Fast and Furious a mistake

Published 3 February 2012

Earlier this week DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano gave her second annual Address on the State of the Nation’s Homeland Security, calling U.S. immigration laws “sorely outdated and in need of revision”

Earlier this week DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano gave her second annual Address on the State of the Nation’s Homeland Security, calling U.S. immigration laws “sorely outdated and in need of revision.”

Napolitano chastised Congress for its failure to pass the DREAM ACT last year. The bill would allow the children of undocumented immigrants who entered the country at a young age to be eligible to become citizens if they go to college or join the military.

Napolitano said “they’ve played the rules” and Congress needs to act.

The Obama administration has become increasingly at odds with states like Arizona, Alabama, and Georgia after they passed harsh immigration laws that require police to stop and check the immigration papers of any individual suspected of entering the country illegally.

In her remarks, Napolitano also admitted that “serious mistakes were made” in Operation Fast and Furious, the heavily criticized program that allowed U.S. guns to be sold to Mexican cartels in an effort to track them back to gang leaders.

I think it was acknowledged that mistakes, serious mistakes were made there,” Napolitano said. “The key question is making sure those kinds of mistakes, from my standpoint, are never again repeated.”