WASHINGTON—Mark Morgan, former acting Customs and Border Protection (CBP) commissioner and Heritage visiting fellow, and Tom Homan, former acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) director and Heritage visiting fellow, released the following statement Tuesday in response to reports that Sens. Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) have circulated a draft proposal on Capitol Hill that would provide amnesty to millions of illegal aliens in the lame-duck session of Congress:
“Once again, Congress is showing that they are not remotely interested in securing our border and upholding our laws. Instead, they’re more interested in ramming through a mass amnesty in a lame-duck session of Congress. The Tillis-Sinema proposal is nothing more than amnesty, cloaked with the fig leaf of ‘more funding’ for Border Patrol. In reality, this proposal would do nothing except encourage more families around the world to put their children, of all ages, in the hands of the cartels, enriching these blood-thirsty and savage organizations, driving even-higher numbers of unaccompanied minors to the border, and further overwhelming an already besieged Border Patrol. When Congress sends the signal that lawbreaking will be rewarded, the cartels will capitalize—and everyone else will suffer.
“Meanwhile, the Tillis-Sinema proposal tries to soften opposition to this amnesty by throwing money at the Border Patrol to ‘speed up processing of asylum seekers’ and hire more Border Patrol agents. In reality, all this money will be used to do is more quickly process and release more illegal aliens into the interior. In essence, this proposal will further entrench Border Patrol under the Biden administration as the final link in a human smuggling operation that originates with the cartels.
“The problem is not lack of funding, or lack of agents—it is an administration that has undone effective border security policies and replaced them with an open-borders agenda that has sparked the worst border crisis in our history. Congress should reject amnesty in all its forms, and the new Congress must get down to business. That means impeaching DHS Secretary Mayorkas, engaging in meaningful oversight of the administration, and passing reforms that will secure our border and reduce illegal immigration.”
For more on why the lame-duck Congress should reject any amnesty effort, read more at Fox News from Lora Ries, director of Heritage’s Border Security and Immigration Center, and former acting DHS deputy chief of staff: Amnesty for DACA fails border security test
