House immigration plan slammed, spends $10B and deports no illegals

Critics including Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions are slamming a House GOP border security plan set for debate Wednesday, claiming it will spend $10 billion on new equipment and border security tricks, but not send one single illegal home. Sessions, the influential Center for Immigration Studies, and the head of the association of former Border Control agents all slammed the H.R. 399 being marked up in the House Homeland Security Committee today as unfocused on the No. 1 issue: U.S. sanctuary to illegals. The bill, however, is geared to handling the tight security of the actual border, not how illegal immigrants are handled once they cross in. Several related pieces of immigration reform legislation are expected to be addressed by the House. “As long as sanctuary cities, welfare, education, and jobs and principally lack of enforcement and enabling by the federal government, are made available to the undocumented alien, we will not be able to secure the physical border,” said Zack Taylor, chairman of the National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers. “Until lawmakers end the catch-and-release policies of the Obama administration,” said Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies, “any infrastructure improvements, new strategies, and better metrics are pointless.” Sessions, the key conservative immigration strategist in the Senate, added, “it does not end catch-and-release; it does not require mandatory detention and return; it does not include worksite enforcement; it does not close dangerous asylum and national security loopholes; it does not cut-off access to federal welfare; and it does not require completion of the border fence. Surprisingly, it delays and weakens the longstanding unfulfilled statutory requirement for a biometric entry-exit visa tracking system.”...more