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Former Mesa Mayor Scott Smith and AZ Governor Candidate: Calls For Expedited Removal
Hearings For Illegal Immigrants; Calls Out Obama Administration For Risking
Children's Lives, Betraying National Security, "Empowering Coyotes, Cartels,
Organized Crime"
Expedited Removal Hearings would send
unaccompanied minors, illegal adults home ASAP, end "mixed message" to would-be
border crossers
MESA—Mayor Scott Smith, Republican candidate for Arizona
Governor, today called on the Obama Administration to immediately end its use of
parole hearings to keep illegal border crossers in the United States
indefinitely, instead calling on the President and DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson to
use the Expedited Removal Hearings process to speed up the removal of the more
than 90,000 illegal immigrants who have crossed the American border since
October.
"We need to stop putting children's lives at risk. We need to stop betraying the security of our country and we absolutely need to end the mixed message President Obama and Secretary Johnson are sending to border crossers streaming across the Mexican border," said Smith. "The Expedited Removal Process is legal and humane – and it will put an exclamation point on securing the American border. "The Obama Administration needs to stop empowering the coyotes, cartels and organized crime syndicates who traffic in human beings. We can't allow criminals to continue to profit by luring tens of thousands more children and families by giving them false hope. These predators are victimizing would-be border crossers, and the Administration is aiding and abetting that crime. We need to send an unequivocal message not to leave your homeland. If you cross into this country illegally, you will be removed just as quickly as you got here, no matter who you are." Expedited Removal Hearings, a streamlined alternative to the much slower parole hearing process preferred by the Obama Administration, allows for the faster removal of illegal border crossers deemed inadmissible for entry into the United States. The process, said Smith, should be used to remove the more than 50,000 unaccompanied children and 39,000 adults who have surged across the Southwest border in the past seven months. "This crisis will continue so long as our border policy is, 'If you make it over the U.S. border, you will be allowed to stay in this country indefinitely.' That's empowering the coyotes and criminals to sell false hope to kids and poor families all over Central America," said Smith. "We don't need to send Joe Biden to Guatemala for a photo op. We need to send a strong message by returning the thousands who were lured to cross our border by criminals. That's the statement we need to make, and we need to make it today." |
