WASHINGTON — Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) on Thursday released a stunning chart illustrating that over 96% of the illegal alien minors arrested in the United States are being allowed to stay in the country, rather than deported back to their country of origin.
According to a release from The Senate Subcommittee on Immigration And The National Interest, which Sessions chairs, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has apprehended 126,902 “unaccompanied” illegal alien juveniles in the past several years, with the number increasing each year. During that same time period, only 4,680 were removed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), or roughly 3.6 percent of the total apprehensions.
“Clearly, the overwhelming majority of these purportedly unaccompanied illegal alien juveniles are from Central America, and not Mexico – where it is easier to do a quick return (even though many are not),” Sessions’ committee staff said in a release. “Even if one assumes that all of the purportedly unaccompanied illegal alien juveniles from Mexico were immediately deported, it would still mean than only 4.8 percent of those who illegally entered during this period were removed.”
During a recent hearing, Senator Sessions asked the Executive Associate Director of ICE, Tom Homan, if increased enforcement would result in a dramatic reduction in attempts to come to the United States illegally.
“I think if you have a consequence of deterrence to illegal activity, the illegal activity will slow down,” he replied.
The lack of enforcement under the Obama administration has led to an influx of illegal unaccompanied minors coming into the country and has caused a humanitarian crisis at the border in recent years.
According to a top Pentagon staffer, the U.S. government has considered housing some of them at military bases around the country, including Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama.
Senator Sessions and his Alabama colleague Senator Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) responded by sending a strongly worded letter to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell expressing their objection to any plan to house illegal aliens in the state, particularly at the military installation.
“Instead of wasting resources searching for housing locations more than 900 miles away from our southern border, we firmly believe that the Administration should be expeditiously and humanely transporting these individuals back to their homes,” the senators wrote.
In addition to this and other illegal immigration, each year the U.S. issues more than 1 million green cards, admits 700,000 guest workers, and allows roughly 500,000 foreign students to study in the U.S.
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