Exclusive - Paul Gosar to GOP Leadership: You 'Should Be' Backing Plan to Make Criminal Foreigners Deportable

Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) says the Republican leadership in Congress should be prioritizing American citizens by supporting his legislation to clarify that criminal foreigners are eligible for deportation out of the United States.

In an interview with SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight, Gosar told Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large, Rebecca Mansour, that his latest legislation, the Criminal Alien Removal Clarification Act, “should be part of a strategy” by the GOP leadership, headed by House Speaker Paul Ryan.

MANSOUR: Is it going to be on the floor for a vote anytime soon?

GOSAR: Well, you know, that’s always the worry that you have is that what does leadership think? And that should be part of a strategy that leadership puts on the floor, but you never know what they’re thinking.

Gosar introduced his legislation to address a loophole identified in Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch’s recent ruling in Sessions v. Dimaya where he said a clause in federal law allowing for the deportation of foreigners found guilty of “a crime of violence” is unconstitutional because it is overly vague.

“This is a winner. This is simple, this is a no-brainer,” Mansour said. “And let’s make it an issue. And if the Democrats want to vote against [deporting criminal foreigners], let’s please get them on the record before the midterms. I would love, I’m sure everybody that’s running for Congress this year or running to hold their seat, would love, love to make an advertisement, to make a campaign commercial noting if their Democrat opponent does not want to vote ‘Yes’ on [deporting criminal foreigners].”

Listen to Gosar’s full interview with Breitbart News Tonight here:

Under Gosar’s legislation, which already has 28 co-sponsors, foreign nationals living in the U.S. would be eligible for deportation if they are convicted of a felony or have two or more misdemeanors on their record.

“The language is simple, satisfies Constitutional scrutiny, avoids loopholes, and gives codified guidance to the DOJ and Homeland Security in order to remove non-citizens who break our laws,” a statement from Gosar’s office says of the bill.

Gosar said, “it makes absolute, perfect sense” for the GOP leadership to start coalescing support from Americans and members of Congress for his anti-illegal immigration legislation.

“It’s very simple, you know it’s not wordy,” Gosar told Breitbart News. “It’s to the point and it prioritizes American citizens.”

Gosar also told Breitbart News that Republican voters ahead of the midterms have reason to be unsatisfied with their members of Congress, but says his anti-illegal immigration legislation can bring public support to pro-“America First” candidates as immigration remains GOP voters’ biggest issue.

GOSAR: There are some pretenses there. This is a way, especially when you have the Speaker now acknowledging that there’s, we’ve got some problems that we’re running into headwinds.

And you know those headwinds, if you talk to people on the street, is that ‘Trust is a series of promises kept. Please tell us how you kept your promises. You said you were going to repeal and replace Obamacare, you didn’t. You said that you were going to build a wall, you haven’t and you failed to even put money there for the president to do it. And then you’ve consistently beat down the American public by putting omnibus bills that go into deficit spending like $1.3 trillion and then give really the concerted effort and gavel of the spending to Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, to California to New York, who are never going to vote for you.’

So from that standpoint, here’s something that’s a goodwill gesture to get the American people believing that Congress actually does represent the people and it starts in the peoples’ House.

As Breitbart News reported, 47 and 40 percent of GOP voters respectively say immigration and national security are the leading issues in their opinion. Meanwhile, only 11 percent of GOP voters said taxes were the most important issue in the country, ranking lower than more obscure issues like school safety and defense spending.

For the midterms, Trump has refused to sign onto the campaign-on-taxes midterm plan, instead, sticking to his populist immigration and trade agenda in recent campaign speeches.

Breitbart News Tonight airs Monday through Friday on SiriusXM’s Patriot channel 125 from 9:00 p.m. to midnight Eastern (6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Pacific).