Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton had a response of his own after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer accused the president of threatening to “tear families apart” with his upcoming illegal immigration raids.
“When things aren’t going well, [President Donald Trump] plays to his base. Instead of putting forth solutions to fix our broken immigration system, instead of pursuing criminals, he threatens to tear families apart,” Schumer tweeted Friday. “This isn’t leadership. This is inhumane & unwise.”
The New York Democrat’s tweet linked to an article about Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) plan to apprehend over 2,000 illegal aliens across the country Sunday, the first day of the Trump administration’s directive to execute mass deportations of foreign national living in the country illegally.
Cotton responded to Schumer, pointing out a detail the minority leader left out about the upcoming raids.
“[Schumer] conveniently omits that these illegal aliens’ cases have been heard & rejected, hence they’re under valid orders of removals,” the Republican senator wrote Saturday. “If illegal aliens with final orders of removal can’t be deported, who can be? Democrats have a radical, open-borders position.”
.@SenSchumer conveniently omits that these illegal aliens’ cases have been heard & rejected, hence they’re under valid orders of removals.
If illegal aliens with final orders of removal can’t be deported, who can be? Democrats have a radical, open-borders position. https://t.co/Kjf95Njykl
— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) June 22, 2019
ICE Acting Director Mark Morgan made clear in a call with reporters Wednesday that the ICE raids would target illegal aliens who have ignored court orders to leave the country.
“These individuals that are here, and they’ve received a final order of removal, I hope they’ll do what we tried to get them to do previously: Contact their local ICE office — bring their family together, contact their local ICE office and work with us to send them back to their home country,” Morgan said during the call.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer delivers remarks during a press conference with Democratic Lawmakers on gun violence along the east front of the U.S. Capitol on June 20, 2019 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Tom Brenner/Getty Images)
The upcoming ICE raids come as illegal immigration appears to only be escalating.
U.S. Border Patrol has encountered well over 600,000 illegal aliens this fiscal year, and the agency believes 1 million will reach the U.S. by the time the fiscal year ends. Border Patrol agents encountered over 144,000 unauthorized migrants in May, the highest month in over a decade. (RELATED: Hundreds Of Illegal Migrants Carry Criminal Histories, DHS Investigation Finds)
Morgan said that, of the migrants currently reaching the southern border, about 75% of them are either unaccompanied minors or family units, and most of them are from the Northern Triangle countries of Central America.
Many lawmakers feel families should be given more leniency to immigration laws. However, the ICE chief made clear that “no class of individual is exempt from our federal immigration statutes.”
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