The real cost of the Administration's reckless, lawless immigration policies

On April 19, the House Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security conducted a hearing on the topic, “The Real Victims of a Reckless and Lawless Immigration Policy: Families and Survivors Speak Out on the Real Cost of This Administration’s Policies.”

I urge you to watch the entire video of that important hearing.

The witnesses were Sheriff Charles Jenkins of Frederick County, Maryland; Michelle Root, mother of Sarah Root; Laura Wilkerson, mother of Joshua Wilkerson, and Bishop Minerva Carcaño of the United Methodist Church.

Root and Wilkerson both lost their children to illegal aliens.

Sarah Root is one more parent who lost a child at the hands of an illegal alien. She told her story at a hearing on Capitol Hill.

The title of a Breitbart news article posted on the day of the hearing was based on Michelle Root’s statement at the hearing, “Mother of Daughter Killed by Illegal: His Bail Was ‘Less Than it Cost to Bury My Baby.’”

The illegal alien in this case was released on bail, and it is believed he fled to his native Honduras.

The point to remember is that foreign criminals and terrorists are, all too often, able to use the “escape hatch” of fleeing the United States to their native countries to evade arrest and punishment.

The first and foremost purpose for the government is to protect this nation and to protect the lives and well-being of our citizens. This is why we have a military. This is why we have police officers and federal agents. This is why we have firefighters and other first responders.

I have testified before the House Immigration Subcommittee on a number of occasions and have also testified before other House and Senate committees and subcommittees on the issue of immigration. Usually my focus is on how failures of the immigration system impact national security and public safety.

I am often asked if I believe that appearing at these hearings is worth the effort. During this most recent hearing, I was pleasantly surprised and gratified to hear Congressman Steve King talk about how years earlier when I was a witness at a similar hearing he had asked me if I knew how many people were killed each year by illegal aliens. I responded by saying I did not have a definitive number, but that I was certain that it would be a multiple of the number of people who died on September 11, 2001. Rep. King then said that because of my response he decided to enlist the GAO to conduct two studies about my response and found that I was correct.

Congressman King was understandably outraged by the failures of the current administration to secure U.S. borders and enforce our immigration laws.

At this most recent congressional hearing, some truly infuriating statistics about the sheer number of criminal aliens who have been released by the Obama administration were provided by Subcommittee Chairman Gowdy, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte and Lamar Smith, former chairman of both the House Judiciary Committee and House Immigration Subcommittee.

This will be hard to swallow, but according to the information provided at the hearing, since taking office the Obama administration has released 100,000 illegal aliens who have serious criminal convictions.

Of those who have been released, prior to their release, 473 had been convicted of committing homicide-related offenses; 375 had been convicted of kidnapping; 890 had been convicted of committing sexual assault, and 10,731 had been convicted of committing criminal assault.

From 2010 to 2014, of those aliens released from ICE custody, 124 went on to commit homicide-related offenses. In 2014 alone, 1,423 other crimes were committed by these aliens after release. (It must be remembered that other crimes may well be attributable to them, but have not been, as yet, determined.)

Sheriff Jenkins noted a high number of transnational gang members in his county and that 64 percent of gang members encountered in 2015 were part of the surge of unaccompanied minors entering the U.S., who are now adults committing more serious crimes. He also noted that gang-related fights have virtually become almost a daily occurrence in some of the schools since that influx of unaccompanied minors.

Rep. Smith noted that although it has been estimated that illegal aliens account for about 3 percent of the U.S. population they account for 30 percent of all murders. Smith’s understandable outrage became apparent when he wondered rhetorically if President Obama might be an accessory to the crimes committed by illegal aliens since he implemented policies that he knows are going to result in the death of innocent Americans.

Congressman Smith previously chaired the House Immigration Subcommittee and the House Judiciary Committee, and I have had the privilege of working with him for many years beginning when he arranged for me to participate in my first hearing in 1997 on the issue of Visa Fraud and Immigration Benefit Fraud and the way that these two issues undermine national security and played a role in the two 1993 terror attacks in the United States. Those two continuing failures of the immigration system figured prominently in the terror attacks of 9/11 and subsequent terror attacks in the U.S.

Insanity has been defined as doing the same things the same way and expecting a different result. By that definition, our approach to immigration is insane.