Human smuggling: “A Federal judge chastised the Department of Homeland Security for not enforcing the law and compares this non-enforcement on the border to “taking illegal drugs or weapons it has seized from smugglers and delivering them to the criminals who solicited their illegal importation” into the United States”, said Poe.
On June 8, 2014 Rep. Ted Poe of Texas asked for permission to address the United States House of Representatives for one minute regarding the crisis at the border:
“Mr. Speaker, according to a Federal judge in Texas, our government is “completing the criminal mission” of human traffickers “who are violating the border security of the United States” and assisting a “criminal conspiracy in achieving its illegal goals.” Here is how ICE is complicit in aiding and abetting human smuggling:
A smuggler is paid to bring children into the United States. The smuggler then is apprehended by ICE and prosecuted, but the criminal act is completed when ICE personally delivers the migrant child to the parent who has instigated the crime. If the parent is also illegally in the United States, ICE neither deports the parent nor the child.
The Federal judge chastised the Department of Homeland Security for not enforcing the law and compares this nonenforcement on the border to “taking illegal drugs or weapons it has seized from smugglers and delivering them to the criminals who solicited their illegal importation” into the United States.
Mr. Speaker, this administration, with its policy of open borders and blatant refusal to enforce the law, is complicit in the crisis at the southern border.
The timing is not a coincidence. The surge of foreign nationals illegally entering the United States all began when the President planted the seed for executive amnesty in a 2012 Rose Garden speech. In this speech, he announced his policy of unilateral administrative amnesty for minors. This was an avoidable crisis created to set the stage politically for universal amnesty.
The President’s policy of nonenforcement has effectively encouraged tens of thousands of people to pay smugglers to bring children from Central America to the United States. Now migrant children just surrender themselves at the border and expect the United States to let them stay, take care of them, or reunite them with their parents who may also illegally be in the U.S.
Why? Because the word is out in Central America that America does not enforce its laws. The number of unaccompanied minors who are smuggled into the U.S. illegally has grown tremendously under this administration, as this chart shows, now up to 142,000 a year.
This is not only a humanitarian crisis, but this crisis is affecting our national security, our economy, our health, and our sovereignty. Our porous border allows anyone to enter the United States illegally. The influx of thousands of migrants comes with a cost to the tune of billions of dollars, all left to Americans to pay for.
The system is overwhelmed. We can’t even take care of our veterans. Now there have been disturbing reports of diseases originating in Central America that have traveled with the migrants coming to our country threatening the health of people who are legally here and American citizens.
This is not isolated on the border towns. Unaccompanied minor children are being sent all over the country. In fact, I just found out last night that Health and Human Services is looking for a school to house unaccompanied minors in Houston, Texas–my hometown.
While the administration acts surprised about the crisis, the paper trail shows they knew that it was coming in January. The Department of Homeland Security in January posted online advertising for transportation contractors needed to help deal with this surge of unaccompanied minors coming into the United States.
The administration knew about this, but rather than enforce the rule of law and increase border security, the administration planned to accept the migrants and find places to house them. This current chaos is also an insult to people who come to America the legal way, but the White House has put politics over the law and what is best for the American people.
So what now? Well, deploy the National Guard to the southern border to deter future migrants from making the journey to America. It is the first duty of the Federal Government to defend the sovereignty of our Nation. Appropriate money that is still going for nation-building in Iraq to fund the National Guard on our southern border. Surely, protecting our border is just as important as securing the border of Iraq. If the President won’t protect the border, let the State Governors do it with the National Guard.
Second, those who have already come here should be safely reunited with their families in their native countries. The law should be changed to expedite their removal. Warehousing these children is not a compassionate response to this crisis. It will not solve the crisis; it will only grow.
The President of the United States should be the first to say to the world: The rule of law will be enforced in the United States. Do not try to beat the system. Come to the United States the legal way or not at all.
But the administration is missing in action in this crisis. It is true the President is going to Texas this week, but he is going down there to raise money for a campaign. He is not going near the border. Maybe it is just too dangerous to go to the Texas-Mexico border”, Poe said.
Source: Congressional Record http://thomas.loc.gov/