Congressional Push Back Against Obama Border Indifference

By Joe Guzzardi
July 7, 2014

At the Hispanic lobby’s urging and angry because he can’t get his way on comprehensive immigration reform, a defiant President Obama is threatening to give executive amnesty to at least six million deportable aliens. Unconstitutional immigration executive orders are a favorite Obama ploy. In 2012, Obama granted deferred action from deportation and work authorization to 560,000 young illegal immigrants, a policy he renewed last month. 

Obama also used Independence Day to praise illegal immigrants even though in Philadelphia over the weekend previously deported Honduran alien Milton Mateo Garcia was charged with raping a 26-year-old doctor. Philadelphia is one of hundreds of sanctuary cities that willfully defy federal immigration authorities seeking to deport aliens. Instead, sanctuary cities allow illegal immigrants to work and live without fearing the consequences of their unlawful entry.

Crime-ridden Honduras is major sending Central America country in the continuing southwest border crisis. Garcia’s case undermines the often heard argument that the United States has a humanitarian obligation to provide for those who want to illegally come to America to allegedly live a better life.

More immigration insanity: on her visit to the border, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, disregarding confirmed reports of diseases among them, said she wished she could take the children home. U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) distributed lollipops to the aliens even though, according to the border patrol, many of those detained are known violent gang members. 

Thankfully, despite the White House’s inexhaustible quest to end U.S. sovereignty by quasi-officially opening the borders and ceaselessly advocating for more illegal immigration, not everyone in Washington has lost his mind. 

On his Rio Grande trip, Louis Gohmert (R-TX) and House Judiciary Committee Vice Chair of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security came away with more realistic sentiments than Pelosi and Jackson Lee’s. Gohmert said that Central Americans repeatedly told him that, contrary to the White House’s spin that they’re fleeing violence, they wanted the proverbial better education. Gohmert made the ominous but unarguable prediction that Obama can’t allow hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants into the U.S. “without destroying the country.”

Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) added another dose of badly needed rational thinking to the border wrangle. Noting that more than 92 percent of the alien surge comes from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, Gosar recommends putting the temporary shelters not in the U.S. interior but in the Central American capitols of Guatemala City, San Salvador and Tegucigalpa.

Obama’s blustering that the alien children will eventually be sent home contradicts the strategy he’s outlined. Instead of sending the National Guard to the border which could have an immediate deterrent effect, Obama will order interior ICE personnel to the Southwest. However, the border patrol is releasing aliens into the interior where, pursuant to Obama’s plan, ICE agents won’t be present to detain and deport aliens. 

Although the administration insists that its consistent refusal to enforce immigration laws while at the same time granting deferred action is not a variable in the Central American surge, ICE statistics tell a different story.

Immigrants under age 18 deported or turned away from ports of entry fell from 8,143 in 2008 to 1,169 last year. A decade ago, about 600 under 18 were deported annually from non-border states compared to 95 in 2013.  

Since Obama hasn’t lifted a finger so far, the likelihood of his swift and decisive action to end a crisis he created is effectively zero. Yet, the consequences of Obama’s continuing inaction are crystal clear: more illegal immigration.

That the U.S. president could be indifferent to border security and the American nation’s future, as many critics contend, is troublesome. But sadly, the facts lead to that conclusion.

     Joe Guzzardi is a Californians for Population Stabilization Senior Writing Fellow whose columns have been syndicated since 1987. Contact him at [email protected]