Posted on 07/26/2014 1:13:59 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe turned up the rhetoric on immigration late this week, telling a national television audience that young immigrants at Fort Sill and elsewhere are in the U.S. “at the invitation of the president” and comparing the situation to the administration’s exchange of five Guantanamo Bay prisoners for U.S. serviceman Bowe Bergdahl.
Inhofe also signed on to a bill by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz that would effectively end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the Obama administration’s policy of giving low priority to deportation of undocumented immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children and have been in the country since at least 2007 and do not have a criminal record.
Inhofe’s Democratic opponent in the November general election, Matt Silverstein, called the three-term incumbent’s comments on MSNBC’s “Morning Rundown” “insulting” to voters and an attempt to deflect attention from the 2008 law that mandates immigration hearings for unaccompanied minors from noncontiguous countries.
The 2008 law passed the House and Senate without objection, meaning it had the tacit approval of Inhofe and every other member of Congress at the time.
“These kids being here has nothing to do with DACA and everything to do with the 2008 law,” said Silverstein.
The deferred action bill does not apply to the nearly 60,000 unaccompanied juveniles who have arrived in the U.S. since last fall, but Inhofe said it is the reason they have made the dangerous journey from Central America.
“(Obama) is making it sound like, ‘Come here, we’ll take care of you,’ and they all believe this,” Inhofe told MSNBC’s Chuck Todd.
Inhofe said he personally spoke to some of those held at Fort Sill and that they had been “programmed to say they had family here, they’d been invited here, they’re going to stay here.”
Inhofe said the 2008 safe-haven law that passed the House and Senate by unanimous consent does not apply to the recent arrivals and that Obama could order them immediately deported.
He said that if Obama could exchange the five Guantanamo Bay prisoners for Bergdahl, he could send the juveniles back without deportation hearings.
“It’s the will to do it,” Inhofe said. “You say, ‘How could they do it.’ Well, how could they turn loose five of the real terrorists? That violated a law directly. The president just has to make the decision.”
Inhofe said Health and Human Services has said the juveniles will not be sent back to their countries of origin — in almost all cases Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.
Silverstein said Inhofe is misstating the law, the reasons for the surge in youthful arrivals and his own responsibility for the 2008 law.
“What’s keeping the kids here is that they have to go through court proceedings,” Silverstein said. “There have been more killings in that area than at the height of the Iraq War. … This surge in violence is precisely what the 2008 law was designed to address.”
The Department of Homeland Security reported recently that arrivals of unaccompanied children fell by more than 50 percent in June but are still unusually high.
Mexico has taken over huge parts of our southern border. US politicians are sold on amnesty so who can fight it. They don’t care about US Citizens ..if they did they would put the people of this country first. What they are doing is making more poor in this country. lowering everyone’s standards.
This is Obama’s direct attack on the homefront. Getting the country disabled and ready for the jihadies. Obama has single-handedly taken the country down. And there is NOTHING our representatives can do about it.
I thought the Honuran children were sent back.
Very few of these illegal alien invaders will be “sent back”. More likely, your tax money will be used to coddle them until they can vote for DIMs/LIBs and until they can “transform” the United States into a copy of their flea-bitten home countries. Deport them all...irregardless of their age. Clown Prince nobama once again breaks his oath of office and the rule of law. Traitor is too kind of an adjective.
I wonder if he’s speaking Spanish to these So. American presidents?
Only if he presses two....LOL.
HA HA HA I pressed 2 and changed the page. LOL
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