At yesterday’s Senate immigration subcommittee hearing, Brandon Judd, head of the Border Patrol agents’ union, decried the “catch and release” policy imposed by the White House. (His statement starts at 2:05:50.) He estimated that some 80 percent of the illegal aliens that are apprehended are released into the United States. The key lines from his statement (emphasis added):
If you are an unaccompanied minor we will not only release you, but will escort you to your final destination.
If you are a family unit, we will release you.
If you claim credible fear [of persecution], we will release you.
If you are a single male and we do not physically see you cross the border and you claim that you have been in this country since 2014, we will release you.
Some are let go with Notices to Appear, a kind of summons, though the head of ICE’s immigration enforcement branch testified at the same hearing that something like half of aliens with such notices never show up to their hearings. (Surprise!)
But what’s most interesting is that final entry in Judd’s litany. It’s based on this line from Obama’s November 2014 executive action memo outlining enforcement priorities, which includes in its second priority of people to deport:
aliens apprehended anywhere in the United States after unlawfully entering or re-entering the United States and who cannot establish to the satisfaction of an immigration officer that they have been physically present in the United States continuously since January 1, 2014. (Emphasis added.)
This is not only a de facto amnesty for any illegal alien in the interior who settled here on or before December 31, 2013, but when applied at the border (as it obviously is) amounts to an illegal-alien right of return. Open borders, indeed.