(CNSNews.com) – House Representative Al Green (D-Texas) said President Donald Trump has a constitutional duty to enforce immigration laws but added that Trump is not doing so when it comes to asylum law and immigration.
The president is engaging “in selective prosecution, and some of it is persecution,” said Green.
At the U.S. Capitol on Thursday, CNSNews.com asked Rep. Green, “Article 2, Section 3 of the Constitution says that the president ‘shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.’ Does the president have a constitutional duty to enforce the immigration laws and, if so, should he then deport illegal immigrants who are in the United States?”
Rep. Green said, “The president does have a duty to enforce the immigration laws. The president is not doing this because one of the laws allows for asylees to come to this country and request asylum.”
“The president is not – he’s doing everything he can to thwart that,” said Green. “He doesn’t seem to believe that the asylum laws should be enforced. So the president engages in selective prosecution, and some of it is persecution. That is my answer.”
Last Thursday, U.S. Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost told the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border Security that more than 100,000 illegal immigrants had eluded the Border Patrol after they illegally crossed into the United States.
“This fiscal year through May, Border Patrol has apprehended over 593,000 illegal aliens between ports of entry along the southwest border,” Provost said in written testimony.
“In addition to the nearly 600,000 apprehensions to date, Border Patrol has documented more than 100,000 individuals who successfully crossed the border illegally and disappeared into border communities before agents could respond,” she said.
A 2018 study conducted by researchers at Yale University and MIT estimated the illegal immigrant population in the United States to be 22.1 million.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) estimated in 2017 that “the total cost of illegal immigration for the United States – at the federal, state, and local levels – was approximately $116 billion.”
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