Presidential candidate John Delaney (D-MD) said Monday that he does not think decriminalizing illegal border crossings is the correct approach to the problem.
“I just don’t think at this moment in time when we have a huge kind of surge at our border sending a message that we’re going to decriminalize crossings is the right thing to do,” he stated during a panel discussion on Hill.TV.
The former representative said he and his wife visited the southern border recently and saw how other countries involved played a significant role in border crossings.
“These people are actually coming for very legitimate reasons — unless we stabilize what’s going on in those countries we’re going to continue to see this refugee crisis,” Delaney commented.
He continued:
Let’s pass a law saying children cannot be separated from their parents, which is the law I’m in favor of. You do that and you don’t have to decriminalize border crossings and I just don’t think decriminalizing border crossings when we clearly have a crisis at our southern border, we clearly have a massive amount of migration.
However, presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said in June that she believes illegal border crossings should be decriminalized. Warren said:
We should not be criminalizing mamas and babies trying to flee violence at home or trying to build a better future. We must pass comprehensive immigration reform that is in line with our values, creates a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants including our DREAMers, and protects our borders.”
Breitbart News reported in May that President Trump said he would impose a 5 percent tariff on all goods coming from Mexico until the Mexican government stopped the flow of illegal immigrants crossing the border. He added that the tariffs would “gradually increase” until the problem was corrected.
The president again sharply criticized the Mexican government in June, prior to a visit by their diplomatic delegation, when he accused the country of being an “abuser of the United States.”
He wrote:
It has been this way for decades. Either they stop the invasion of our Country by Drug Dealers, Cartels, Human Traffickers, Coyotes and Illegal Immigrants, which they can do very easily, or our many companies and jobs that have been foolishly allowed to move South of the Border, will be brought back into the United States through taxation (Tariffs). America has had enough!
Breitbart News reported that Trump later announced on June 7 that the United States had signed an agreement with Mexico that he said would “stem the tide” of migration.
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