Continuing his assault against reforms to the U.S. immigration system, Sen. Jeff Sessions lashed out at Rep. Michael McCaul’s border security proposal.
The Alabama senator told conservative radio host Laura Ingraham Monday morning that his main concern with the proposal is that “five years from now, we’re not going to have control of the border,” while adding that nobody is “going to do anything about it” in the future.
“The biggest danger to me is that we will say we’ve fixed the matter when we’ve fixed the border and nothing else has to be done, and the special interest forces that are so effective in blocking things that will actually work will re-double their efforts and block the things that need to be done,” Sessions said. “I do believe this bill is not strong, won’t make a big difference, Border Patrol agents have just hammered it, saying it’s not going to be effective.”
“It doesn’t add any Border Patrol officers, doesn’t end the catch and release,” Sessions told Ingraham. “It may not be McCaul’s jurisdiction, but we’ve got to be sure that this idea where you capture people at the border and then they’re released in the United States, asked to come back to court, and of course they never come back to court, that’s got to end, and this bill doesn’t deal with that.”
“The most realistic, from my perspective, problem is that five years from now, we’re not going to have control of the border and nobody’s going to do anything about it,” Sessions said pointedly. “We’ve been talking about this for 30 years and it hasn’t happened.”
The Alabama Republican also touched on the potential 2016 candidates, telling Ingraham that he hasn’t seen any prospective candidate come “out with clarity” on what needs to happen in the future with immigration and the border.
“I don’t see anyone yet coming out with clarity on what needs to occur,” Sessions said. “I would like them to say with integrity, ‘I understand the American people, your family, your jobs are being hurt by this excessive, illegal flow of immigrants, we’re going to end that. We’re going to stop the border, we’re going to create a lawful system that serves the national interest, not the special interests, and I’m going to be laying out details to show how to get there.'”
“This can be done. It’s not that hard,” Sessions added.