Washington, D.C. – This week, the House Judiciary Committee has outlined how President Obama’s actions violate the Constitution, allow criminals to evade the law, make our communities less safe, and punish legal immigrants. Collectively, these actions encourage more illegal immigration and undermine the integrity of our immigration system.

How President Obama’s Immigration Enforcement Priorities Encourage More Illegal Immigration:

-  President Obama establishes open borders: Any unlawful immigrants who do not benefit from the President’s deferred action program and are not listed as a priority for removal will surely be able to stay here indefinitely. Specifically – 

-   The Obama Administration makes it tougher to deport those who overstayed their visas. The Obama Administration makes it virtually impossible to deport aliens who violated the terms of their visas and overstayed. Aliens can only be removed if they “significantly abused” their visas in the view of the Administration. Because roughly 30-40% of the unlawful population came here legally and then overstayed their visas, there will be few, if any, sanctions in place to dissuade others from coming to the U.S. and doing the same.

-   The Obama Administration doesn’t prioritize the removal of border crossers who came here less than a year ago. Under the new priorities, any alien that came to the U.S. prior to January 1, 2014 is not a priority for removal. This means that the tens of thousands of unaccompanied alien minors, family units, and adults who came here during the border surge after the implementation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and before this cut-off date will surely be able to stay here indefinitely. This will encourage more people to make the dangerous trek north to the United States, hoping to benefit from a future amnesty.

-   The Obama Administration doesn’t prioritize the removal of fugitives. As notedearlier this week, there are currently about 900,000 aliens with final removal orders. Although the Obama Administration previously deemed fugitive aliens as a priority for removal, now they are no longer a priority if they were issued a removal order before January 1, 2014. This means that the Obama Administration is disregarding the removal orders they have already issued and wasting millions of taxpayer dollars spent obtaining these orders. As a result, many more aliens with final removal orders might be tempted to take their chances and abscond. 

-  President Obama permits sanctuary city policies: Under President Obama’s immigration edicts, he has ended Secure Communities – a simple and successful program to screen criminal aliens arrested and booked in jails – and has replaced it with a watered-down screening program. Additionally, the President has gone one step further by ending U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainers, meaning the ability to pick up and process removable aliens encountered by law enforcement, in most circumstances. In place of detainers, ICE will issue “requests for notification” to state and local law enforcement regarding who is in their custody. This effectively leaves states and localities responsible regarding the decision to enforce or not enforce the immigration laws: they can refuse to comply with the requests for notification should they choose to do so.

History Shows That Amnesty Without Enforcement Leads to More Illegal Immigration:

-  The 1986 immigration overhaul didn’t end illegal immigration: In 1986, Congress passed and President Reagan signed into law an immigration bill that granted roughly three million unlawful immigrants a path to citizenship and promised the enforcement of our immigration laws going forward. However, these promises were never kept and today the United States has roughly 11 million unlawful immigrants.

-  President Obama’s deferred action program created a border surge: In the summer of 2012, President Obama created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program by executive decree, allowing hundreds of thousands of unlawful immigrants to live and work here. Subsequently, tens of thousands of children, family units, and adults from Central America flooded our nation’s southern border with the hope of benefiting from this program. Specifically, the number of unaccompanied alien minors crossing the border jumped from 6,560 in FY 2011 to 13,623 in FY 2012. The number of children crossing the border illegally then soared from 24,658 in FY 2013 to 68,541 in FY 2014. And the number of family units seeking to come here illegally grew from 13,600 in FY 2012 to 68,445 in FY 2014.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) made the following statement on this issue: 

“President Obama’s unilateral immigration actions do nothing to end illegal immigration. In fact, the President’s actions will only make it worse. By allowing unlawful immigrants to live and work here and by gutting the interior enforcement of our immigration laws, President Obama has opened the floodgates to another wave of illegal immigration at our border. Immigration reform starts with enforcement first, not amnesty.”