The Harris county experience teaches that most of the crimes at issue are misdemeanors and traffic violations. Some immigrants landed in jail for conduct that isn't clearly criminal:

The police arrested 101 people accused of running from them, 55 accused of failing to give an officer information, and 81 who allegedly did not have any identification.

The legitimate fear that the program's expansion will encourage other jurisdictions to replicate the behavior of the odious Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who gained notoriety by targeting and harassing residents of Hispanic neighborhoods in the Phoenix area in his lust to enforce immigration laws, prompted the Obama administration to revise Homeland Security's position on a related law:

Opponents said the program, known as 287g, was intended to identify criminal aliens but instead has led to racial profiling; it allowed local police to identify and arrest illegal immigrants for such minor infractions as a broken tail light. ... The new guidelines sharply reduce the ability of local law enforcement to arrest and screen suspected illegal immigrants. They are intended to prevent sheriff and police departments from arresting people "for minor offenses as a guise to initiate removal proceedings," according to Homeland Security. The program will instead focus on more serious criminals.

Curbing racial profiling doesn't sit well with our super-genius. Rep. Smith responded to the revised guidelines by writing:

As the co-author of the legislation enacting the 287g program, I can attest that it was created to let state and local law-enforcement officials help enforce all immigration laws, not a select few. It only makes sense to remove illegal immigrants from the streets before they commit more serious crimes.

Once again, Smith's assumption is that anyone who overstays a visa or who crosses the border illegally is sure to commit a serious crime, notwithstanding the millions of undocumented workers who live productive, nonviolent lives. Smith apparently regards racial profiling as a necessary enforcement tool to protect the nation from the imagined crimes that undocumented workers are bound to commit.

Smith's rhetoric scores points with other hard-liners who believe the government should dedicate itself to removing each of the 12 million undocumented workers who live here. How that herculean task could be accomplished, and who would pay the bill for all the new ICE agents and immigration judges and temporary detention facilities that would be required, are questions the super-genius ignores. Angry rhetoric, after all, is easier to manufacture than an intelligent solution to a complex problem.