President Obama’s unilateral decision to implement parts of the failed DREAM Act legislation has allowed “dreamers” to game the system and stay in the U.S. illegally, according to two union leaders representing immigration agents.
Chris Crane, who represents Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, explained at a press conference:
Prosecutorial discretion for dreamers is solely based on the individual’s claims. Our orders are if an alien says they went to high school, then let them go.… Officers have been told that there is no burden for the alien to prove anything.… At this point we don’t even know why [the Department of Homeland Security] has criteria at all, as there is no requirement or burden to prove anything on the part of the alien.
We believe that significant numbers of people who are not dreamers are taking advantage of this practice to avoid arrest.
George McCubbin, president of the National Border Patrol Council union, added that the Department of Homeland Security has made it impossible for agents to do their jobs, with Crane stating that it’s led to disorganization and “confusion” at ICE.
Obama via executive branch fiat has granted effective amnesty to any illegal immigrant who claims that he or she came to America as a child. With no way to verify such a claim, America’s immigration enforcement officers are left powerless to enforce the actual immigration laws passed by Congress and signed by a President.
Beyond the practical problems, as Heritage previously stated about the Obama Administration’s imperial immigration policy:
The fundamental problem is that the Administration is trying to implement laws that Congress hasn’t passed. The President himself has admitted that he doesn’t have the constitutional authority to implement the DREAM Act: “The idea of doing things on my own is very tempting, I promise you, not just on immigration reform. But that’s not how our system works.”
One of the reasons our Founding Fathers separated the powers among the three branches of government is to ensure that laws have the majority support of the people’s representatives, who take due consideration of all the competing interests. By circumventing the legislative branch and its deliberative processes, President Obama made a decision that subverts the rule of law and makes enforcement a road riddled with pot holes.
