Steve King Warns Trump: DACA Illegal Aliens Cannot Be Legalized ‘Without Sacrificing the Rule of Law’

As negotiations are underway between the White House and establishment Republicans to potentially give amnesty to illegal aliens, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) is warning the president against such any plan that includes amnesty.

In a post on Sunday, King—a staunch pro-American immigration reformer who has long opposed mass immigration—urged Trump to steer clear of a plan that would begin with giving amnesty to nearly 800,000 illegal aliens shielded from deportation by the President Obama-created Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

According to King, such an amnesty deal, even if it is coupled with a plan to reduce legal immigration levels to benefit America’s working and middle class, would cause a surge at the U.S.-Mexico border of illegal aliens while continuing to circumvent the Rule of Law:

King’s assertion that a DACA amnesty would lead to more illegal immigration is readily backed up by border-crossings in November 2017 and the rate of illegal aliens coming to the southern border when Obama was implementing the DACA program.

Between Fiscal Year 2011 and Fiscal Year 2014, the same period when DACA was being implemented, border-crossings nearly tripled as illegal aliens sought to gain the temporary amnesty status that came along with having DACA protection.

Likewise, in November 2017 when Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and establishment Republicans and Democrats endorsed a plan to give amnesty to DACA illegal aliens, border-crossings ticked back up to Obama-era levels, as Breitbart News reported:

A month later, Nielsen admitted in an interview with Fox News that illegal aliens and human smugglers working on the southern border listen to the conversations surrounding national immigration policy in Washington, DC:

“They have money, they have time, and this is their job. So they do watch,” Nielsen said of illegal aliens and human smugglers. “They watch what’s happening in Congress. They watch what’s happening as part of our national conversation and they learn as we along. So we see more and more loopholes being exploited.”

Most recently, Kansas Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate Kris Kobach has also warned Trump against accepting a deal on DACA amnesty by the Republican establishment, Breitbart News reported. Kobach, like King, said such a plan would lead to a major border surge.

Kobach told Fox News:

DACA is bad policy. It’s going to hurt … those 800,000 illegal aliens are in their 20’s and 30’s, they’re not kids. And they’re competing for jobs with Americans who in that age group are facing 9 percent unemployment, 19 percent under-employment. So we’re going to be taking Americans out of jobs and giving those jobs to DACA recipients effectively.

And it’s going to cause a surge in illegal immigration. So what would President Trump be willing to take that hit—that bad policy that’s also going to anger his base—you know what would he be willing to get … what would he be willing to demand? And I think he has to demand more than just the RAISE Act, which is the end to chain migration, and more than just the border wall. He’d have to demand E-Verify, mandatory nationwide as well to make sure that this new surge of illegal aliens—which will come in, there’s no question, if we grant an amnesty, they will come in—make sure that they don’t take additional jobs from Americans.

Aside from a potential border surge due to a DACA amnesty, the plan would additionally be a drain on American taxpayers, with the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reporting that at least 1 in 7 DACA illegal aliens would end up on Medicaid and 1 in 5 would end up on food stamps after being given legal status or a pathway to citizenship.

The cost of DACA amnesty would be placed on top of the costs that Americans already pay every year due to illegal immigration into the U.S.

As Breitbart News reported, the most recent Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) report reveals that an illegal alien costs each American taxpayer approximately $8,075, totaling a burden of roughly $116 billion annually.