OPINION:
Within weeks, Congress could pass the largest amnesty for illegal aliens in four decades — as part of a deal that would do almost nothing to secure the border or address the root causes of illegal immigration.
Last week, the framework for a potential bill, negotiated by Sens. Thom Tillis and Kyrsten Sinema leaked to the media. On Tuesday, Mr. Tillis confirmed the reports, though he said he was still negotiating the details.
The framework grants legal status and a pathway to citizenship to roughly 2 million immigrants who came to the United States illegally as minors. That’s about triple the number of illegal immigrants who are enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), the amnesty program set up by President Barack Obama that courts have ruled unconstitutional but have allowed to partially stay in place for now, while lawsuits proceed.
In exchange for a permanent amnesty, the framework includes a variety of measures that — in theory — would deter some future illegal border crossings but that, in practice, would prove mostly toothless. Those measures include more funding to speed up the processing of asylum cases, more funding to detain and deport migrants whose asylum bids are denied, and more resources for the Border Patrol.
Trading amnesty for border security funding is a bad idea because merely throwing more money at the worst border crisis in American history won’t change the reality that the Biden administration has no interest in faithfully executing immigration law and repatriating people who are unlawfully present in the United States.
Consider how the administration has ramped up the practice of “catch and release,” allowing immigrants to enter the interior United States illegally as long as they promise to appear in court at a later, scheduled date. More than 75% of them never show up for those court dates, according to data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The surge in catch and release has resulted in staggering numbers of people entering the country illegally. For instance, in August 2020, under the Trump administration, the Border Patrol released just 10 of the roughly 47,000 illegal immigrants it caught into the interior. By August 2021, under the Biden administration, the Border Patrol released nearly 44,000 of the 195,000 illegal aliens that officers had arrested, according to a Washington Times analysis.
And the problem has only gotten worse since then. The number of migrants enrolled in ICE’s “Alternatives to Detention” program — which tracks people released into the interior via ankle monitors or check-ins by phone and smartphone app — has soared from about 87,000 when President Biden took office to over 343,000 as of mid-November.
The administration has also unlawfully offered parole — which the government is supposed to grant only on a case-by-case basis — to tens of thousands of illegal immigrants, thus allowing them to stay and work in the United States for up to a year. In April 2022 alone, officials paroled over 91,000 migrants, according to a lawsuit filed by Texas against the administration.
And the administration has abetted asylum fraud by ending the “Remain in Mexico” program, which forced petitioners to wait south of
the border for their court dates. The policy discouraged many migrants from journeying to the United States in the first place since they knew they’d no longer be allowed to stay and work here for years while their cases wind through the legal system.
Most would-be asylum petitioners aren’t truly fleeing persecution in their home countries; they’re simply exploiting a loophole. Consider that in fiscal 2021, immigration judges found that only 14% of migrants whose cases originated with a credible fear claim actually merited a grant of asylum.
Simply put, the Tillis-Sinema framework trusts open borders advocates in the Biden administration to follow the law and deport illegal immigrants — something that officials have shown zero interest in doing.
If other Republicans join Mr. Tillis, they’ll be repeating Ronald Reagan’s 1986 mistake of trading an upfront amnesty for later promises of increased border security and enforcement — promises that members of both parties quickly reneged on. That lack of follow-through was one of Mr. Reagan’s major regrets, according to his son Michael and his former attorney general Ed Meese.
Many of the foreign nationals brought to this country as children have sympathetic stories. Congress could certainly debate the merits of legalizing them, but not before ending the illegal immigration crisis for good and preventing the conditions leading to perpetual amnesties.
My organization has joined with a coalition of groups concerned about the current border crisis and future border surges, and our positions are a matter of public record. We are always willing to work toward solutions, but we will never sign off on a “solution” that doesn’t fix anything.
The Tillis-Sinema framework falls far short of that standard. Dangling amnesty while doing nothing to fundamentally reform the asylum system or cut off the jobs magnet attracting illegal immigration would only worsen the border crisis.
• Chris Chmielenski is deputy director of NumbersUSA.
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