By Maj. Gen. Jerry R. Curry, US Army (Ret.)
By a shameless, unconstitutional power grab the Administration is trying to sidestep Congress and grant amnesty to millions of illegal aliens, a policy the American people abhor. This is not executing the law as required by the constitution but is unilaterally appropriating to the Administration, with the consent of a Republican controlled Congress, the Congresses’ constitutional right to draft laws.
Meanwhile, the Congress chooses to stand mutely by and do nothing. And the courts have also acquiesced and gone along with the Congress. But U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen was not taken in by the ruse. On February 16, 2015, he issued a temporary injunction to halt the President’s unlawful creation of a special legal status for illegal immigrants.
An illegal alien who, in violation of US law, crosses the border into this country is a criminal, make no mistake about it. Illegal aliens have no claim to services such as medical care which comes only with U.S. Residency Status. Yet when the Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) is informed by local law enforcement agencies of the location of an illegal immigrant which ICE is supposed to arrest and deport, they seldom respond.
For example, in 2012 ICE was informed of the existence of more than 400,000 illegals who had committed crimes in this country, some of whom were being detained by local authorities in local jails. ICE only responded to 19 percent of those cases. Of the criminals which ICE chose not to deport — about 50 percent — upon release reoffended. The federal government has become as lawless as the illegal immigrants, and has chosen to help them break the law.
One of the excuses given for this governmental lawlessness is that these immigrants help our economy by being willing to take low paying jobs that US citizens refuse to take. Immigration policy should not be based upon the nation’s economic self-interest, but on the Constitution, law and justice. Article 2, Section 3, of the Constitution specifies that the President “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” If the President does not faithfully execute the nation’s laws, a constitutional crisis could engulf the nation and lawlessness prevail over justice.
Another excuse advanced for not taking action to apprehend and deport illegal immigrants is that it is virtually impossible to secure a border because people will always find a way to sneak across it. Tell this to the East Germans. During the 28 years of the Berlin Wall’s existence, from 1961 to 1989, the German Government estimates that only 5,000 people were able to successfully violate and cross over the 96 mile long Berlin Wall that guarded the East-West German border. Only one hundred thirty-six of those who tried to sneak across the border — about 18 a year – were killed.
Until the current President took office, America has always been a nation of lawful immigrants, and has shunned being a refuge for criminals and terrorists. Illegal immigrants have crossed the border before but not with the US Government’s blessing. Not only is there now a flood of refugees spilling over across our border, but criminals and terrorists are mixed in with them. Recently authorities picked up a border crosser who had been deported twenty times previously.
This does a great injustice to the legal, law-abiding immigrants who play by the rules and deserve to legally benefit from all the country has to offer them.
The United States of America is an exceptional nation from which all the other nations of the world have benefited. No other nation has so selflessly given of its substance and the lives of its youth in service to others to establish and reinforce justice, liberty, democracy and respect for the rule of law. That is why the U.S. Constitution says the President, “Shall take Care that (America’s) the laws be faithfully executed.”
Mr. Curry is a retired Army Major General, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Carter administration; Acting Press Secretary to the Secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration; and Administrator of the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration in the Bush Sr. administration.
