Senior Senate Judiciary Committee member Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) joined with House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) on Thursday to write directly to President Barack Obama to “express concern over the exclusion of immigration and customs enforcement officers and their representatives from the negotiations surrounding immigration reform.”
Goodlatte and Sessions wrote to Obama that the National Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Council, an organization that speaks for more than 7,000 ICE officers and agency staffers around the country, had “requested a meeting with the Administration three months ago to weigh in on immigration policy and share their firsthand concerns over the breakdown of interior enforcement.”
“To date, they have received no meeting invitation,” Goodlatte and Sessions wrote.
In their letter to Obama, Goodlatte and Sessions wrote that they want the president and his administration to “meet with representatives from the National ICE Council as soon as possible.” They said Obama and his administration need to “hear the views of their rank-and-file officers.”
National ICE Council president Chris Crane, an ICE officer himself and a former United States Marine, noted in recent Senate testimony that even Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has shunned him and other ICE officers, ignoring and refusing requests for meetings.
“No, senator,” Crane replied when asked if Napolitano or other administration officials would allow ICE agents to meet with them. “In fact what we see is that the special interest groups are brought into ICE headquarters, up at DHS headquarters. [They brag] about the special interests groups they’re bringing in to work on the policies and have completely shut us out.”
Even though the administration has blown off America’s immigration law enforcement officers from being able to have input into this debate, President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden met with at least three illegal immigrants pushing immigration reform in the Oval Office this week.
“President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden met in the Oval Office on Tuesday with three people who are in the country in violation of U.S. immigration laws but who have received ‘deferred action’ allowing them to stay in the country under the terms of a ‘memorandum’ issued unilaterally last year by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano,” CNS News’ Fred Lucas wrote this week.
“In all, Obama and Biden met on Tuesday with eight people who are advocating immigration reform, according to White House readout of the meeting,” Lucas added later in the story. “The White House readout listed three of those as having received ‘deferred action.’ Most others were legally in the United States with relatives who were illegal aliens.”
In a press release accompanying the announcement of his and Goodlatte’s letter to Obama, Sessions questioned the president’s decision to meet with illegal immigrants over law enforcement officers. “The fact that the President and the Vice President are hosting illegal immigrants in the White House while constricting citizen tours and refusing to meet with immigration officers says it all,” Sessions said. “The White House will not even grant ICE officers a low-level White House meeting but invites illegal immigrants into the Oval Office.”
Spokespeople for the White House have not responded to Breitbart News’ request for comment in response to the Goodlatte-Sessions letter.