Representative Pete Sessions (R-TX), who chairs the House Rules Committee, told Breitbart News in terms of immigration policy, President Barack Obama and his administration has deliberately worked to circumvent the law, to frustrate law enforcement personnel trying to live up to their oath.
“Over the last eight years, this administration, within the bowels of Homeland Security, knew and understood that they were a part of an error that took some 800 people, who were in this country and were due for deportation, instead moved to them to the opportunity citizenship,” said the Texas Congressman, who has led the House Rules Committee since January 2013.
The Inspector General of the Homeland Security Department released a report Monday describing mistake:
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services granted U.S. citizenship to at least 858 individuals from special interest countries who had been ordered deported or removed under another name. This happened because neither the digital fingerprint repository at DHS nor the repository at the Federal Bureau of Investigation contains all old fingerprint records of individuals previously deported.
OIG found that the records are missing from the DHS digital repository because paper-based fingerprint cards used prior to 2008 were not consistently digitized and uploaded into the repository. The FBI repository is also missing records because, in the past, fingerprints collected during immigration enforcement encounters were not always forwarded to the FBI. Currently, about 148,000 fingerprint records of aliens from special interest countries who had final deportation orders or who are criminals or fugitives have yet to be digitized.
Sessions sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson Friday demanding to know how this could have happened.
The chairman said he is convinced that these 858 new citizens are not the whole story.
“I do believe it’s larger, but I don’t have evidence of that,” he said. “But, I have seen where they do have non-compliance and they are really pretty open about it.”
While the focus is on the southern border, there is also lax immigration enforcement at JFK International Airport in New York City, San Francisco International Airport or Los Angeles International Airport, he said.
“I have a belief that there is simple a systematic approach to the lack of enforcement and to not follow a law, which they evidently disagree with and have chosen to some bit of non-compliance,” he said.
“I have no real personal relationship with Mr. Johnson,” he said. But, Johnson has been the recipient of many, many letters from the chairman as has Attorney General Loretta Lynch–directly related to questions relating to media reports and the Congressman’s own observations.
“Mr. Johnson is a very nice man,” he said. “He shows up at the right places when there is a terrorist attack and he has a great deal of sympathy. On the other hand, he openly attends what I consider to be offensive events, in light of the times, as makes his job appearances across the country.”
The chairman said Johnson regularly meets with groups that should take a stronger stand against terrorism as it relates to American foreign policy.
Sessions said Congress through Rep. Michael McCaul (R.-Texas), the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, and Rep. Robert Goodlatte (R.-Va.), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and himself have repeatedly sought information from the administration regarding its handling of immigration and other topics to no avail.
“We have been blocked from this information, just as you have seen Congress been blocked from the IRS, Health and Human Services, the Department of Justice,” he said. “It is a systematic approach to dealing with official representatives of the House of Representatives–this have been their take,”
Sessions said that Obama’s first Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano set the tone with her support of lax border restrictions and enforcement.
“Napolitano inflicted upon the department an attitude of non-compliance with the law and I see not a lot that has changed, not eight years later,” he said.
“This administration took a stand early on in complete defiance to the constitutional prerogatives that would be given to all of us to perform our duties that our oath of office entitles us,” he said.
Sessions said it is more than just being in the room where it happens, it also is about being able to properly gauge the performance of the executive branch fulfilling the will of Congress with the proper information previous Congresses have received from previous presidents.
The administration does not respect Congress and its officials violate their own oaths of office by ignoring the balance of powers in the Constitution and the role of Congress, he said.