Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) suggested during a hearing yesterday that a deal to give amnesty to roughly 800,000 illegal aliens shielded by an Obama-created program could be reached if it includes more border security and mandatory E-Verify.
Grassley, considered an ally to President Trump’s populist, economic nationalist, “America First” agenda, said during the Senate hearing that any deal to give amnesty and a pathway to U.S. citizenship to the hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program must include more security at the U.S.-Mexico border.
“First and foremost, any potential DACA agreement has to include robust border security,” Grassley said. “And by that, I don’t mean a wall. Of course tactical infrastructure like fencing is a part of the answer, but border security is more than that.” He went on to say:
Border security is a kind of all of the above approach, including fencing, technology, funding for more law enforcement personnel and equipment, changes to substantive laws so the Catch and Release and other misguided policies are ended and we need to require that the administration finally complete the bio-metric entry and exit system that Congress has continually demanded and allocated money for over the last 15 years.
Additionally, Grassley seemed to be accepting of an amnesty for illegal aliens, should mandatory E-Verify – the tech program which mandates that employers hire legal immigrants and American citizens – be a part of the deal.
“Second and equally as important for robust border security, we’ve got to make sure that any deal includes meaningful interior enforcement,” Grassley said. “The simplest, most common sense, may be to ensure that we eliminate the root causes of undocumented immigration to make it, the E-Verify system mandatory for all employers.”
“This system helps employers confirm that job applicants are here legally,” Grassley continued. “I know that this is a controversial and difficult step and so many corporate interests are going to object, but we know that jobs are the number one reason people come here.”
Grassley also said an amnesty deal on DACA would need to include better and swifter immigration enforcement when it comes to deportations and a clean-up of the current back-logged immigration courts.
“I’m confident that if everybody is reasonable, we can reach a solution,” Grassley concluded.
When asked by Breitbart News if Grassley did in fact support amnesty, so long as border security and mandatory E-Verify efforts are included in the deal, spokesperson Taylor Foy said he would not “weigh in on hypotheticals.”
“That said, [Senator Grassley] was clear today that any legislation that addresses DACA must also contain other enforcement and security provisions to ensure that we don’t find ourselves in a similar situation down the road,” Foy told Breitbart News.
As Breitbart News reported, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Assistant Secretary Michael Dougherty claimed during the Senate Judiciary hearing that Trump’s administration was in support of an amnesty for the DACA illegal aliens.
An amnesty for illegal aliens covered by DACA would ultimately result in a massive chain migration, where potentially nine to 19 million foreign nationals would be able to be brought to the U.S. by their newly amnestied relatives, as Breitbart News reported.
On the campaign trail, Trump promised to shutter DACA immediately when he entered office. But, according to the New York Times, multinational billionaire Steve Schwarzman convinced Trump to keep accepting new illegal aliens onto the DACA rolls.
It was only when Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and nine other state attorney generals threatened to sue the Trump administration for continuing DACA that Trump sent out Attorney General Jeff Sessions to announce that the temporary amnesty program would be phased out over the course of two years.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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