Senate Budget Committee ranking member Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) has warned all of his colleagues in Congress that President Barack Obama’s new immigration strategy—his plans to legalize millions of illegal alien adults through executive power—could destroy America as we know it.“I write to inform you of a development that threatens the foundation of our constitutional Republic,” Sessions, Congress’s top immigration hawk, wrote in a letter that was hand-delivered to all 535 members of Congress on Monday and provided exclusively to Breitbart News.
Sessions cites a recent report from the National Journal, in which reporter Major Garrett detailed how, despite the ongoing crisis at the border, Obama plans to legalize anywhere from five to six million illegal alien adults in much the same way he did for illegal alien minors through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) in summer 2012.
“Obama made it clear he would press his executive powers to the limit,” Garrett wrote on July 3, as cited by Sessions. “He gave quiet credence to recommendations from La Raza and other immigration groups that between 5 million to 6 million adult illegal immigrants could be spared deportation under a similar form of deferred adjudication he ordered for the so-called Dreamers in June 2012.”
Sessions cites another paragraph from that National Journal piece as well, in which Garrett reported that President Obama has “now ordered the Homeland Security and Justice departments to find executive authorities that could enlarge that non-prosecutorial umbrella by a factor of 10.”
“Senior officials also tell me Obama wants to see what he can do with executive power to provide temporary legal status to undocumented adults,” Garrett wrote. “And he will shift Immigration Control and Enforcement resources from the interior to the border to reduce deportations of those already here and to beef up defenses along the border.”
Sessions, whose office hand-delivered the letter to every member of Congress Monday, wrote that this development from the Obama administration is “breathtaking.” The letter continued:
The action the President is reportedly contemplating would be a nullification of the Immigration and National Act by the Executive Branch of government. Indeed, it would be an executive nullification of our borders as an enforceable national boundary. By declaring whole classes of illegal immigrants beyond the reach of the law, it would remove the moral authority needed to enforce any immigration law, creating the very open-borders policy explicitly rejected by Congress and the people. And it would guarantee that the current illegal immigration disaster would only further worsen and destabilize.Sessions’ letter to colleagues comes as some in both Republican and Democratic circles consider various plans they say would fix the problem of the border crisis. Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), John McCain (R-AZ), and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) are reportedly working together to develop a broad comprehensive immigration legislative strategy similar to their “Gang of Eight” bill last year.
House GOP leadership is mulling a plan that would appropriate billions of dollars to the administration for use because of the crisis, packaged together with a version of the border bill offered by House Homeland Security Committee chairman Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX). All those plans come as President Obama has asked Congress for $3.7 billion in new funding for use in dealing with the illegal aliens here. House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) suggested in an op-ed at Breitbart News the president doesn’t need any more money.
But Sessions argues that all of this bickering in Washington is a facade that doesn’t address the real problem. To really fix the issue, he argues, politicians need to be willing to enforce immigration laws in America and stop dealing with special interests who want the border to remain unsecured and seek continually high levels of immigration, legal or illegal, given how it benefits them in the form of cheap labor.
“As you know, over the last five and a half years, the President has routinely bypassed Congress in order to suspend enforcement of our immigration laws,” Sessions wrote. “The most dramatic of these lawless directives was the President’s 2012 Deferred Action Program for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), in which the president implemented by executive fiat legislation that Congress has three times rejected.”
Sessions wrote that the president’s DACA program “has led to catastrophic results,” because it was “declaring to the entire world that America will not enforce its immigration laws against those who enter the country as minors” and that the U.S. will “freely grant them access to work permits and taxpayer resources.” Sessions wrote that Obama’s DACA policy and other policies “unleashed a flood of new illegal immigration into the country” and that this is “the disaster that he created.” As such, Sessions argues that politicians should not just pass new legislation or throw money at the problem; they should work to reverse the president’s executive overreaches.
Sessions told his colleagues that “there is a clear path forward” from this problem in order to “prevent the continued dissolution of America’s borders.”
READ SEN. SESSIONS' LETTER TO CONGRESS:
Sen. Sessions Dear Colleague Letter
“Certainly, DACA and the President’s other numerous unlawful policies must be terminated,” Sessions wrote. “But as a first step, Congress must not acquiesce to spending more taxpayer dollars until the President unequivocally rescinds his threat of more illegal executive action.”
Sessions echoed a call from Goodlatte that Congress should pressure Obama to use “his lawful powers to begin enforcing the law now” rather than “passing legislation on the promise of future enforcement” like the Gang of Eight bill did or like some forthcoming spending packages are likely to.
“If Congress simply passes a supplemental spending bill without these preconditions, it is not a question of if the President will suspend more immigration laws, but only how many he will suspend,” Sessions wrote. “Congress cannot surrender to this lawlessness. Acting in defense of Congress, our constituents, and their communities, we must stand firm. This transcends politics. It is about our duty as constitutional officeholders. It is about the solemn oath we all took as Members of Congress.”
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