President Obama said in October that while he was not on the ballot, his policies were. The result was a historic rejection of his radical agenda. Perhaps more than any issue, voter disgust over the President’s amnesty for undocumented individuals dictated the outcome. The President is threatening to expand his unconstitutional amnesty in December, which represents a direct threat to the economic and national security of this country.
The President’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program was created by a June 15, 2012 Executive memorandum and allows illegal aliens to obtain a two-year deportation deferral, subject to renewal, along with work permits. The program applies to individuals who were under the age of 31 on June 15, 2012 and have been unlawfully residing in the country continuously since June 15, 2007. According to Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), there was a 412% increase in Family Unit apprehensions and an 88% increase in Unaccompanied Alien Children apprehensions at the Southwest border in FY2014 through August compared to the same time period for FY2013.
I visited the Southern border on October 24th and received a briefing from CBP agents at the McAllen Station in the Rio Grande Valley. The blunt assessment of CBP agents was that the President’s amnesty, in particular the DACA program, has been the root cause of the surge of illegal aliens crossing our Southern border. CBP agents warned that further executive action to relax deportation standards would result in approximately 100,000 additional apprehensions next year within the McAllen jurisdiction alone. To add context, they stated that for every individual apprehended crossing our Southern border, two to three go undetected.
Given all of this, I watched in astonishment the day after the election as President Obama held a press conference and doubled down on his mission to grant mass amnesty by the end of the year. At a time when the work force participation rate stands at its lowest level since 1978 (62.7 percent) and we are trying to decimate ISIL, the last thing our country needs is to grant work permits to millions of undocumented individuals and advertise to enemies that our borders are not secure.
The President is also creating a Constitutional crisis, which I spoke of on the House floor in July. I stated that Democrats had gone from “Yes We Can” to “Because We Can.” I asked if the President has the power to delay part of a law, can he delay an entire law? I asked if the President has the authority to allow illegal individuals to stay in the country, does he have the authority to tell legal citizens to leave? The point being, where does the President’s power begin and end if he is allowed to act beyond the scope of his authority in furtherance of a purported greater good? The law is not a suggestion.
Remember the words of Thomas Paine: “The greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated in the name of the noblest causes.” I have listened to Democrats argue that Congress should “do the right thing” and “get out of the way of this President.” However, our Founding Fathers established a system of government that emphasizes process over result. It is the integrity of the process that allows Americans to have confidence in the resulting government action. The Democrats’ “ends justify the means” approach is a threat to the institutional integrity that is the backbone of America’s three branch system of government. Article I, Section 8, Clause 4 states that Congress shall have the power of establishing “an uniform process of naturalization,” not the Executive.
I will re-introduce legislation to freeze DACA and tie the President’s hands with regard to the creation of future deferred action programs at the beginning of the 114th Congress. I hope my Democratic colleagues will join our efforts to stop the President’s amnesty and respect the will of the American people. This election was a referendum on the Obama doctrine of lawlessness that is cracking the foundation of our democracy and shredding the Constitution. The American people want it stopped, period.