Politics & Policy

Obama: Trust Me!

The president’s immigration non-enforcement gives the GOP cold feet.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article has been revised since its initial posting.

It’s tiresome and, frankly, lazy to blame racism for GOP reluctance to reform immigration anytime soon. The more plausible explanation is that Republicans do not trust Obama to enforce any new legislation. As it is, Obama is not exactly Mr. Enforcement on immigration.

As with Obamacare, Obama selectively executes immigration laws. The result is chaos.

• Last year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials freed 67,879 illegal-alien criminal convicts, rather than detain or deport them. The Center for Immigration Studies calls this policy “Catch and Release.”

“The release of so many convicted criminals back into U.S. communities, when they could be removed to their home countries, is a large-scale abuse of authority that inevitably leads to public harm,” states a CIS paper. “This phenomenon was quantified in 2012 in a report commissioned by the House Judiciary Committee. This analysis found that 26,000 illegal aliens who were released instead of removed went on to commit another 58,000 crimes soon after release. These additional crimes included 59 murders, 21 attempted murders, more than 4,000 major felonies, and 1,000 other violent crimes.” Such offenses included carjacking, child molestation, and lynching.

Now that Obama has liberated twice as many illegal-alien convicts as the House analyzed, Americans should brace for brand-new felonies and homicides. As these victims pile up, their blood will drip from Obama’s fingers.

• The U.S. Border Patrol last month issued new orders to its 21,000 officers. They now must retreat even if physically attacked by violent illegal aliens who have breached America’s southern frontier.

“Agents shall not discharge firearms in response to thrown or hurled projectiles,” says the March 7 directive from Border Patrol chief Michael Fisher. “Agents should obtain a tactical advantage in these situations, such as seeking cover or distancing themselves.” As Fisher’s memorandum states:

Since 2007, there have been over 6,000 assaults against Border Patrol agents resulting in numerous injuries to our agents and the tragic death of three agents. In the face of these dangers, Border Patrol agents continue to show exemplary restraint and professionalism. Since 2010, agents have been assaulted with rocks 1,713 times. In these situations, agents responded and used deadly force 43 times which regrettably resulted in the death of 10 individuals.

According to the Police Executive Research Forum, preventing Border Patrol agents from defending themselves against stone-casting or even Molotov-cocktail-tossing illegal aliens “could create a more dangerous environment [for officers] in rural or desolate areas, often alone, where concealment, cover, and egress is not an option.” The Department of Homeland Security commissioned PERF’s paper and quickly ignored it.

Border Patrol officers may not shoot at “a moving vehicle merely fleeing from agents.” Similarly, as the Daily Caller revealed, agents “should not place themselves in the path of a motor vehicle or use their body to block a vehicle’s path.”

Fisher now wants to deploy Tasers, pepper spray, and pellet guns as alternatives to the Border Patrol’s standard firearms, according to the Los Angeles Times.

This whole thing sounds like a line from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (“Run away! Run away!”). But Obama has made it federal policy.

This staggering institutional weakness will fuel scorn and contempt and invite fresh assaults. News coverage and, eventually, cell-phone footage of Border Patrol agents fleeing rock-flinging illegal aliens will embolden America’s enemies.

• As they scrambled before the March 31 open-enrollment deadline, Obamacare navigators recruited applicants at Mexican consulates in Brownsville, Texas; Chicago; and Las Vegas.

Sections 1101, 36B, 1411, and 5000A of the (un)Affordable Care Act explicitly state that to receive Obamacare, one must be “a citizen or national of the United States or an alien lawfully present in the United States.”

This seems irrelevant to Enroll America field organizer Jose Medrano. “Whether they’re Mexican nationals or whether they’re United States citizens or whether they’re in transition,” Medrano told Breitbart News, “if they’re there, it is our responsibility within all of America to educate on the Affordable Care Act.”

The words of Obama himself should comfort any illegal alien who illegally secures Obamacare. As he told Telemundo and Univision on March 6: “None of the information that is provided in order for you to obtain health insurance is in any way transferred to immigration services.”

So Obamaism expects that federal officials will: Run away as illegal aliens rush in. Offer them handouts. And if they commit felonies, set them free.

No wonder Republicans trust Obama on immigration about as far as they can hurl the White House.

— Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News contributor and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.

Deroy MurdockDeroy Murdock is a Fox News contributor and political commenter based in Manhattan.
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