Comer: President Biden has sent the message that our immigration laws can be violated without consequence

WASHINGTON – House Committee on Oversight and Reform Ranking Member James Comer (R-Ky.) opened today’s hearing by emphasizing the humanitarian and national security crisis at our southern border is being left unchecked by Congressional Democrats and fueled by President Joe Biden’s radical, far-left immigration policies.

In his opening statement, Ranking Member Comer notes the Biden Administration has completely gutted interior enforcement priorities, halted the deportation of illegal immigrants, and proposes granting amnesty to over 11 million illegal immigrants living in the United States. He stressed these unilateral actions will worsen the border crisis, lead to more parents bringing their children dangerously to the border, and negatively impact millions of Americans currently searching for work. He concluded by urging the Biden Administration to abandon these reckless policies and ensure our country’s immigration laws are enforced.

Below are Ranking Member Comer’s remarks as prepared for delivery.

Thank you, Chairwoman Maloney, and Inspector General Horowitz for appearing here today.

It is clear from the Inspector General’s review of the Department of Justice’s implementation of the 2018 Zero Tolerance policy that there were communication breakdowns, failures to fully coordinate with the Departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services, and an overall failure to account for and ensure communication between parents being prosecuted for illegal entry and their minor children.

And I believe these implementation failures are part of the reason that President Trump ended this policy more than two years ago in June 2018 through an executive order reiterating that it was the Administration’s policy to keep families together whenever possible.
The Zero Tolerance policy suffered from serious implementation flaws that should never be repeated.

Unfortunately, the humanitarian and national security crisis on the southern border has raged on for nearly a decade, starting under former President Obama and then- vice president Biden’s watch. Democrats in Congress have refused to close serious loopholes in our law that are fueling the crisis.

One loophole all but guarantees that most parents who bring a minor child with them when illegally crossing the border will be released into the United States. This loophole encourages illegal immigrants to bring a child with them to the southern border so they are quickly released into the United States.

The border crisis reached its peak in May 2019, when over 132,000 individuals were apprehended by Border Patrol agents just that month. The majority of those – 84,000 – were part of family units including children in tow. And that was only one month. In fiscal year 2019, the Border Patrol apprehended over 850,000 individuals illegally crossing the southern border, with more than half being family units.

Absent the congressional action needed to end the crisis, the Trump Administration employed many tools to deter illegal entry into the United States and prevent human smugglers from exploiting victims for financial gain.

President Trump implemented the Migrant Protection Protocols, where inadmissible aliens from Central America were returned to Mexico to await immigration court proceedings instead of being released into the interior of the United States for years. President Trump also implemented reforms to the asylum system to prevent illegal immigrants from gaming the system and filing frivolous applications.

All of these reforms produced results and contributed to a large decrease in illegal migration during the latter months of 2019 into Fiscal Year 2020. In Fiscal Year 2020, those reforms contributed to halving the illegal immigration on the southern border to 400,000 apprehensions, while family unit apprehensions decreased substantially to 52,000 – numbers which are still far too high in my opinion.

But illegal immigration is on the rise again, even as the Biden Administration cancels these much-needed reforms by executive order and guts interior immigration enforcement by agency memorandum.
On his very first day in office, President Biden’s administration suspended enrollments in the Migrant Protection Protocols program, publicly announcing the change.

The Biden Administration also sent a memorandum to Immigration Officials across the Department of Homeland Security completely gutting interior enforcement priorities. Even many convicted criminal aliens are no longer considered priorities for enforcement so long as they were released from criminal custody prior to January 20, 2021.

That memorandum also ordered a 100-day moratorium on almost all deportations of aliens with final orders of removal. Fortunately, a Federal judge has already temporarily enjoined the administration from carrying out that misguided policy.

President Biden’s first legislative proposal sent to Congress would give amnesty to over 11 million illegal aliens already living in the United States, some of whom only arrived weeks before. These illegal immigrants would receive immediate work authorization, competing with Americans for jobs at a time when we already have 11 million Americans unemployed and searching for work.

Through these actions, President Biden has sent the message loud and clear to the world that our immigration laws can be violated without consequence. It’s no wonder that we now see more caravans comprised of thousands of foreign nationals organizing to leave their homelands to come illegally to the United States.

These radical, far-left immigration policies will continue to enable the humanitarian crisis at the border, place more children in peril as they are brought dangerously to the southern border, encourage more illegal immigration, and undermine the rule of law.

I urge the Biden Administration to reverse these reckless policies and to do its job mandated by the Constitution to take care that the immigration laws of this country are enforced.