On Thursday, Sens. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and Ted Cruz (R-TX), who have arguably been the two most influential conservatives in stopping amnesty legislation, urged their colleagues to put more pressure on President Barack Obama, so he does not unilaterally grant temporary amnesty to millions more illegal immigrants.
In a colloquy with Cruz on the Senate floor, Sessions said Obama’s potential executive actions represent an “exceedingly grave threat that go[es] beyond anything we’ve ever seen in this country” and “threatens the very constitutional framework of our republic and the very ability of this nation to even have borders.”
He vowed that the “American people will not allow it to happen” if they discover what is going on. He said it was now up to members of Congress to rally the nation against Obama’s potential grants of amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants.
Referencing a letter that he and 21 other Senators sent to Obama warning him not to nullify the country’s immigration laws, Sessions said every Senator should back Cruz’s bill to prevent Obama from extending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program to future illegal immigrants.
Cruz has also introduced legislation that would make it easier to deport illegal immigrant children from countries other than Mexico and Canada and require the federal government to reimburse states and local governments for dealing with the border crisis.
Sessions said Congress rejected Obama’s amnesty plan “under the circumstances he advocated” and noted that “he has no power to go forward and go beyond that, and we’re not going to allow it to happen. It’s wrong.”
“This president is not going to get away with unilateral amnesty,” Sessions said. “This Congress will be held to account.”
The White House will meet with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus on Friday to discuss executive actions and, according to Rep. Luis Gutierrez, Obama assured them last week that he would enact “bold” executive actions to “stop the deportation of our people.”
Sessions said that at some point, every Member will have to vote and be responsible for allowing the president “to run roughshod over the law of this country, of the people’s Representatives and, in effect, the people of the United States.”
Cruz blasted Obama for playing pool and going to fundraisers instead of going to the border during his recent trips to Colorado and Texas. Referencing Obama’s attendance at a fundraiser with Scandal producer Shonda Rhimes, Cruz said it is “scandalous” that the “president has more time being fundraiser-in-chief than doing his basic job as commander-in-chief.”
Cruz said, “The humanitarian crisis is the direct consequence of President Barack Obama’s lawlessness” and mentioned that the spike in the number of illegal immigrant children entering the nation increased drastically, not after the 2008 human trafficking law was signed, but after Obama enacted his temporary amnesty program for illegal immigrant children in 2012. Cruz said it was a “predicted and predictable consequence of that amnesty.”
Saying that the Obama proposed a supplemental funding bill that does “nada” to solve the problem, Cruz listed the horrors migrant juveniles have faced while making their journeys. He told stories from Border Patrol agents of children being raped and forced to kill and maim other children. Cruz said there have been photographs of “pregnant women abandoned and left to die by vicious cartels and coyotes.” He discussed children penned up in detention centers and families being extorted and brutalized by coyotes and smugglers.
“This is the face of amnesty,” Cruz said while blistering what Obama has wrought with his unilateral actions on immigration and promises of more. “The only way to stop this humanitarian crisis is to stop President Obama’s amnesty.”
Cruz said as long as Obama continues to promise amnesty, migrant children will keep coming and getting “victimized.”
Sessions declared, “We’re not going to allow it to happen.”
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