Obama’s ICE Director: No Immigration Enforcement Until Amnesty Is Passed
Julia Hahn, Breitbart, July 21, 2015
President Obama’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) director tells lawmakers that no consequences are planned for sanctuary cities until Congress first passes “comprehensive immigration reform.” Sarah Saldaña testified before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on criminal alien violence.
After hearing emotional testimony from families torn apart by illegal immigrant murderers, Republican members of Congress grilled two administration witnesses: Leon Rodriquez, Director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and Sarah Saldaña, Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Both Rodriquez and Saldaña have been tasked with carrying out President Obama’s executive amnesty for so-called DREAMers, which includes work permits and medical benefits for low-income illegal aliens funded by citizen taxpayers.
Sen. David Vitter repeatedly pressed Saldaña on why the Administration was taking no action against sanctuary jurisdictions that refuse to turn over dangerous criminal aliens from their prisons and jails to federal law officers. Saldaña replied that Congress would first have to pass “comprehensive immigration reform.”
Vitter: “This has been going on for years and you still are not prepared to say that there is ever going to be any negative consequence to those [sanctuary] jurisdictions. When is that going to change?”
Saldaña: “I presume when you all address comprehensive immigration reform; perhaps it can be addressed there.”
Vitter described Saldaña’s answer as “ridiculous” and kept pressing: “And absent Congress passing that [Senate immigration] bill, that you and the Obama Administration prefer, you don’t think right now we can stop sanctuary cities from flaunting federal law? You don’t think right now there can be any negative consequences when they do not properly cooperate under existing federal law with immigration enforcement?”
Saldaña gave a muddled reply: “That’s what I understand that all of you are working on.”
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Immigration and the transformation of America is shaping up to be the most passionate issue of the 2016 race.
When Governor Scott Walker was question by a DREAMer during a recent campaign stop and said illegal aliens seeking to become Americans needed to return home. He also suggested at the same stop that foreign worker visas should be limited when American jobs and wages are in danger, a position that polls well with liberals and conservatives alike.
