EXCLUSIVE–Trump Will Make ‘Major Legislative Push’ Ahead of Midterms to End ‘Dangerous Catch and Release’

President Trump is gearing up to push a major legislative agenda this summer centered around ending the “Catch and Release” program, which allows foreign nationals to be released into the U.S. while they await immigration and asylum hearings through a number of legal loopholes and weak asylum laws.

In an exclusive statement, White House Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley told Breitbart News:

The President is going to make a major legislative push this summer to have Congress close the dangerous catch-and-release loopholes in our immigration law.  These loopholes are exploited by illegal immigrants and put American lives at risk.

Congressional Democrats endanger public safety and national security because they oppose the Administration’s efforts to pass desperately needed legislative reforms to our immigration system.  These obstructionists continue to make it crystal clear to the American public that they put the interests of illegal immigrants and corporatist donors ahead of the needs of hundreds of millions of American citizens. [Emphasis added]

The Catch and Release program was thrown back into the forefront by a caravan of Central American asylum-seekers and border-crossers who have sought to use the country’s loose asylum laws to gain entry.

A source close to the administration told Breitbart News that Legislative Affairs Director Marc Short is leading the effort to officially end Catch and Release before the midterm elections and promote Trump’s “America First” immigration agenda. Trump, as Breitbart News reported, has signaled that he is dedicated to his popular immigration initiative despite attempts by the Republican establishment to push him away from the wage-boosting effort and towards promoting the less influential issue of tax reform.

Most recent polling, as Breitbart News reported, revealed that 47 to 40 percent of GOP voters say national security and immigration are the biggest issues facing the nation. Meanwhile, only 11 percent of GOP voters said the same of taxes.

The statement’s mentioning of “corporatist donors” is a hint that Trump’s focus — unlike the Republican establishment’s — will be not only on ending illegal immigration to the U.S., but also raising American workers’ wages in the process.

The effort to cut immigration levels, where the U.S. admits more than 1.5 million illegal and legal immigrants every year, is opposed by the big business lobby, Democrats, and key members the Republican establishment. Their economic model seeks to keep wages stagnant for America’s workers by continuing the inflow of cheap, foreign workers through various immigration loopholes.

A group of 20 Democratic Senators sent a letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee asking that cheap, illegal foreign workers stop being deported from the U.S.

Trump’s tightened labor market — through increased border security and deportations — has secured high-paying industry jobs for American teens, as well as history-making wage growth for American workers in the construction industry, the garment industry, for workers employed at small businesses, black Americans, and restaurant workers.

While Trump’s economic nationalist plan to reduce overall immigration to boost Americans’ stagnant wages has resulted in a number of local, blue-collar industries seeing wages rise, there has not been significant wage growth for blue-collar workers across the board as border-crossings continue to rise.

Likewise, white-collar American workers have yet to see significant wage growth as legal immigration levels and the number of white-collar foreign guest workers brought to the U.S. has not been reduced.

Currently, the U.S. admits more than 1.5 million legal and illegal immigrants every year, with more than 70 percent coming to the country through the process known as “chain migration,” whereby naturalized citizens can bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the U.S. In the next 20 years, the current U.S. legal immigration system is on track to import roughly 15 million new foreign-born voters. Between seven and eight million of those foreign-born voters will arrive in the U.S. through chain migration.