The omnibus spending bill, passed by the Republican-controlled House and Senate, will allow more illegal aliens to be released into the United States after they are caught crossing the southern border through the “Catch and Release” program.
The spending bill, which Trump signed despite opposition from conservatives and his base of supporters, paves way for the Catch and Release program to not only continue, but increase in its use.
Catch and Release is the process where illegal aliens caught by federal immigration officials are released back into the U.S. until their immigration court hearing. Part of the reason for their release into the country is because the federal government refuses to fund the space needed to detain illegal aliens until their hearing.
After being released, illegal aliens often do not show up for their court hearing and become quasi-fugitives living in the interior of the country, adding to the already booming 12 to 30 million illegal alien population.
Local media reports across the U.S. have highlighted how the Catch and Release program has continued:
Currently, according to the Washington Times’ Stephen Dinan, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been using about 40,761 beds in its detention centers on average to house illegal aliens awaiting their hearings.
Ryan’s spending bill eliminates nearly 250 of those detention center beds, thus increasing the number of illegal aliens who will be released back into the U.S. through the Catch and Release program.
The spending bill does not include any of the provisions from Trump’s list of pro-American immigration principles, where he called for the end of Catch and Release.
Trump’s populist immigration agenda, wherein he has called on the Republican-controlled Congress to reduce overall immigration levels to raise the wages of American workers, has largely fallen on deaf ears in the GOP leadership.
For the 2018 midterm elections, Republican voters have said that reducing overall illegal and legal immigration levels to the U.S. — where more than 1.5 million immigrants are admitted annually — is a bigger priority than tax reform, replacing Obamacare, and even destroying ISIS.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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