Joe Biden is set to agree to a plan to provide amnesty and repatriations to over 1,000 illegal immigrants previously deported under President Trump.
The Biden administration is currently involved in active settlement negotiations with the ACLU, who is representing deported illegal immigrant parents and their children, who have remained in America, in Ms. L v. ICE.
Under Trump’s “Zero Tolerance” policy, illegal immigrant parents were prosecuted and deported, and their children were placed in Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) custody, separating them. However, the federal immigration policy of family separation has existed to various degrees in America since at least 2001. To quote a 2016 Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals opinion, “Before 2001, families apprehended for entering the United States illegally were most often released rather than detained because of a limited amount of family bed space; families who were detained had to be housed separately, splitting up parents and children.”
As part of the settlement, the ACLU is demanding that the Biden administration provide amnesty to over 1,000 illegal immigrants that were separated by Trump’s policies and provide taxpayer-funded reparations and social services to them and their children. To quote the lead attorney in the case, Lee Gelernt, “The ACLU is in settlement negotiations with the Biden administration to provide full relief to the thousands of separated families, not just reunification in the U.S. but permanent status, compensation and social services. We are hopeful this will get done, and we will continue to pressure the Biden administration to move as quickly as possible.”
Aside from likely providing amnesty and reparations to these thousands of illegal immigrants, Biden has already provided aid and comfort to countless other illegal immigrants. On Biden’s first day in office, he ended the “remain in Mexico” policy that was established under President Trump. By no longer requiring asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for their American court hearings to take place, Biden is allowing for illegal immigrants to disregard American laws and avoid their court hearings while remaining in the country. What incentive does an illegal immigrant have to show up to a court hearing if they receive the same treatment, regardless as to whether or not they show up?
On Biden’s first day in office, his administration also issued a 100-day moratorium on nearly all deportations of illegal immigrants. Luckily, the move was blocked by a federal judge just days after Biden announced the moratorium. To quote U.S. District Judge Drew Tipton, who ruled against Biden’s moratorium, “The Defendants do not cite, and the Court cannot find, other instances in which any government agency paused its essential duties and tasks for 100 days to reassess its priorities.” While Biden may not have been successful at implementing his deportation moratorium, Biden has already shot down deportations of illegal immigrants to the lowest level in American history. This comes at a time when illegal border crossings at America’s southern border have spiked to the highest level in 20 years.
The costs of Biden’s disastrous border policies are astronomical. To begin, Biden’s administration recently spent $86 million on a contract to provide hotel rooms to around 1,200 illegal immigrants in Texas and Arizona for six months. Biden’s administration is also estimated to be spending at least $60 million per week on migrant child detention centers alone. There are currently over 16,000 illegal migrant children being held in the Department of Health and Human Services facilities. The average cost of caring for each child in these facilities is $290 per day. Since illegal migrant children are held in HHS facilities for an average of 31 days before they are released to a family member or sponsor, Biden’s administration is spending approximately $8,990 to care for each illegal migrant child that they hold at HHS detention facilities. In contrast, the federal government spends just $1,100 per student on K-12 education for Americans each year.
As a result of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, which was signed into law by Biden back in March, upwards of 2 million illegal immigrants with over 1 million U.S.-born dependent children were eligible to receive stimulus checks. This means that illegal immigrants received up to $4.38 billion in cash payments from the federal government, thanks to Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress. Did you even receive a stimulus check? Countless illegal immigrants sure did, and they did so at the expense of your tax dollars.
Biden has also proposed the largest amnesty bill in U.S. history. The U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 would legalize somewhere between 11 million and 22 million illegal immigrants and provide taxpayer-funded flights back into America to illegal immigrants deported by President Trump but not convicted of a felony so that they can obtain amnesty too.
Biden and his administration are not simply ignoring the crisis at America’s southern border. They are creating and enabling it. The only way to hold the Biden administration responsible for their border crisis is at the ballot box. Elect conservatives in 2021 & 2022 that will enact sensible immigration policies and never support candidates from either party that do not believe in the importance of American border security.