ICE Agents Urge Senators to Vote 'No' on Immigration Bill

ICE Agents Urge Senators to Vote 'No' on Immigration Bill

on Mon, 24 Jun 2013

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) National Council president Chris Crane, an ICE agent and former marine, urged U.S. Senators on Monday morning to vote “no” on the repackaged version of the Senate “Gang of Eight” immigration bill. 

In a statement provided to Breitbart News, Crane said the bill in its current form would allow criminal aliens and gang members to get amnesty and put the safety the United States at risk.

“Senator Corker--a lead sponsor of the 1,200 page amendment being voted on today--has admitted that needed interior enforcement provisions are absent,” Crane said, specifically referring to how Corker admitted--as Breitbart News detailed--that this amendment he is cosponsoring does not help fix the problems. “Senator Rubio, who promised ICE officers and Sheriffs that he would take steps to repair the bill’s provisions that gut interior enforcement, has abandoned that commitment. He directly misled law enforcement officers.”

Crane added that Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), a member of the Gang of Eight, admitted to ICE officers in private meetings that certain provisions in the bill would be bad for the country, but Rubio left those provisions in the version of the bill being voted on in the Senate on Monday.

“Senator Rubio left unchanged legislative provisions that he himself admitted to us in private were detrimental, flawed and must be changed,” Crane said. “Legislation written behind closed doors by handpicked special interest groups which put their political agendas and financial gains before sound and effective law and the welfare and safety of the American public. As a result, the 1,200 page substitute bill before the Senate will provide instant legalization and a path to citizenship to gang members and other dangerous criminal aliens, and handcuff ICE officers from enforcing immigration laws in the future. It provides no means of effectively enforcing visa overstays which account for almost half of the nation’s illegal immigration crisis.”

Crane said this legislation hurts law enforcement officers’ ability to enforce the laws of the country, and “empowers political appointees to further violate the law and unilaterally stop enforcement.”

“This at a time like no other in our nation’s history, in which political appointees throughout the federal government have proven to Congress their propensity for the lawless abuse of authority,” Crane said. “There is no doubt that, if passed, public safety will be endangered and massive amounts of future illegal immigration--especially visa overstays--is ensured.”

Crane went on to say that instead of attempting to fix America’s broken immigration system, the framers of this bill intentionally avoided fixing the problems and in many cases made it worse.

“Abuses by political appointees, who currently pick and choose which laws enacted by Congress will or will not be enforced, will escalate with their increased discretion and authority provided by this bill,” Crane said. “This bill avoided every significant problem with our broken immigration system that should have been addressed, and instead became a wish list for special interest groups representing and profiting from illegal immigrants. Regretfully, the months of talking points by the Gang of Eight do not accurately reflect the content of this bill. This bill will not only fail, it will worsen the broken system we now have. It should not be allowed to pass the Senate for the House of Representatives to ‘hopefully’ fix later as Senator Corker has suggested.”

Crane said that, as this bill’s current provisions are as he says even Sen. Rubio admits “detrimental” to America’s national security, this bill should not pass the U.S. Senate.

“Either good faith debate must continue until further amendments can be made to dramatically improve the legislation, or if forced to vote today, on behalf their constituents, Senators must vote no on this 1,200 page substitute bill,” Crane said. “Far from fixing the bill, the Corker-Hoeven Amendment makes it worse. A vote against this bill is not a vote against the immigration reform which we all seek, it’s a vote against bad legislation and the special interests that wrote it; it’s a vote to start this process anew and create reforms that truly fix the nation’s broken immigration system.”