IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Caroline May
BreitbartJune 25, 2014WASHINGTON, D.C. — "Let's face it: I've been a thorn in leadership's side," says Arizona
Republican Rep. Matt Salmon, sitting at his desk in the Rayburn House Office
Building.
Earlier that day, Salmon had just been named by Speaker John
Boehner to a special "working group" on the crisis at the southern U.S. border,
where tens of thousands of unaccompanied children are streaming into the country
with hopes that President Obama will grant them amnesty.
Salmon is the
most conservative member of the new group, and his selection by Boehner is
surprising, to say the least, given that the Arizonan has been a leading critic
of House leadership.
"Probably nobody was more shocked than me, but I was
pleasantly surprised," Salmon says.
On the other side of the ledger, the
group includes Florida Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, a passionate advocate for a
comprehensive immigration bill, and Rep. John Carter (R-TX), who negotiated for
years with liberal Democrats, including Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-CA), to craft an
immigration bill that never saw the light of day.
Leading the new group
is Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX). Its other members include House Judiciary Committee
Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michal
McCaul (R-TX), and Rep. Steve Pearce (R-NM).
"They put some
independent-minded people on there," Salmon says. "At least they didn't stack it
up with a bunch of 'yes people [for Obama or Boehner]'" he adds. "I'm glad to
see that."
With his selection to the working group, Salmon is emerging as
something of a conduit between Boehner and the right flank of the GOP conference
on the issue. Last October, Salmon told an audience he had met privately with
the Speaker, who vowed that the House wouldn't enter a "conference committee" on
the Senate "Gang of Eight" immigration bill, widely denounced by immigration
hawks.
The formation of the working group comes as the border crisis is
deepening.
Since October, more than 52,000 unaccompanied minors have been
detained crossing into the United States through the southwest border – the vast
majority of whom have been from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador – a 99
percent increase over last year.
"The humanitarian crisis will not be
fixed; it will be exacerbated if we don't deal with the border enforcement part,
with the law part of it. If we don't deal with that, the waves will just keep
coming," Salmon tells me.
Earlier this month, Salmon visited the
detention center in Nogales, Arizona – where the government is housing hundreds
of illegal immigrant unaccompanied minors. What he found, the Arizona Republican
says, is that all the 140 Customs and Border Patrol officers at the center have
been taken off the border to take care of the children.
"These border
cops, as I call them, are just as frustrated as anyone because they're not
allowed to do their job. Their hands are tied, and one of the reasons their
hands are tied, especially with the unaccompanied minors, is because of our
existing laws on trafficking – human trafficking," he says, referring to a
Bush-era law that requires unaccompanied minors from countries not contiguous
with the United States to receive an immigration hearing.
"The problem is
guys like me believe these waves are going to keep coming if we don't, through
our actions, send a really clear and unambiguous message that there is no
amnesty for these children and that they will be processed back to their
countries as quickly as possible," he adds, noting that on average, seven years
elapse before unaccompanied minors receive a court hearing.
As the matter
has worsened, a major debate has erupted in Washington over whether President
Obama's unilateral amnesty for illegal aliens brought to the U.S. as minors,
colloquially called "DREAMers" in reference to the "DREAM Act," a proposal to do
the same, has caused the influx.
Salmon cites Obama's Rose Garden
announcement of the unilateral amnesty – called the Deferred Action for
Childhood Arrivals program – as a beginning of the problem.
"I think he
thought he was doing a really compassionate thing," Salmon says. "The question
that I asked these CBP guys, nobody could answer, but just wonder, is 'for every
child I see here' – and there were 1,250 children there in these cages – 'for
every child that's there, how many didn't make it?'"
"If we don't clarify
that there is no amnesty and that they will be processed immediately, there will
be no deterrent, and the waves will keep coming," he says, stressing that the
crisis is as much a law enforcement issue as it is humanitarian.
"More
children will die, more children will end up in slavery, and more children will
be in cages. How is that compassionate?" he asks.
One proposal Salmon is
reviewing would give additional flexibility for CBP to immediately process
children for removal, instead of keeping them in the United States for
immigration hearings. Salmon asserts that the long periods between their initial
detention and court hearings are a major problem.
"We've got to change
that. And hopefully the President will be incentivized, because of the
humanitarian crisis, to work with us to close that problem, fix that problem in
the law so that they can be processed quickly and not be here seven years," he
states.
"If you made that much in a year – if you spend $8,000 to get a
child to America, only to have that child come back the next week, would you do
it again? And what would you tell your friends who were thinking of doing the
same thing? 'Don't do it. You're wasting $8,000. You're wasting a year of your
income.' So that is the only thing that is going to stop this," Salmon says.
