A former Arizona sheriff who experienced the impact of illegal immigration first-hand says the blatant encouragement and executive actions of President Barack Obama will be to blame for what is shaping up as a repeat of last summer's chaotic border surge.
"Is anybody surprised?" former Graham County, Arizona, Sheriff Richard Mack told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner on
Newsmax TV on Thursday, saying of the Obama administration, "They're offering all these freebies to people to come here."
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"If you do come, we'll give you a fast track to citizenship," said Mack, paraphrasing U.S. policy. "If you do come here, you'll get free education, free healthcare, free transportation, free food, and we'll make sure you get a job, and we'll make sure you get registered to vote."
"I don't blame these people for wanting to come here," said Mack, founder of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association. "I've lived in Latin America. I've been in Central America and I have friends in El Salvador and Guatemala. I wouldn't blame anybody for wanting to leave those countries and come here.
"But the thing of it is, we still are a country of the rule of law, and our laws should apply," he said. "And when the president makes a joke of our laws, this is what's going to happen."
Mack was joined on air by Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, who said that Obama immigration policy "is to have no policy, and, unfortunately, it's legal immigrants and mostly American communities that pay the price for this."
More than 12,000 children have crossed the border since fiscal year 2015 started on Oct. 1, and not many are being sent back, Vaughan said earlier this week. In what she called "Surge 2," Vaughan estimated that border officials will catch about 42,000 unaccompanied alien children in this fiscal year — the second highest number on record.
Vaughan told Berliner on Thursday that immigrants are responding to incentives created by this administration through a combination of inaction — dialed-back enforcement — and action — the president's executive order in defiance of Congress to shield millions here illegally from being deported.
"The policy of this administration is to look the other way at most illegal aliens, even if they've been involved in criminal conduct," she said, "and to do as little as possible to enforce the laws while simultaneously deciding to hand out work permits to probably about half of the population of people living here illegally, and to increase the number of people who get visas to come here as tourists and temporary visitors."
Vaughan said these measures have the enthusiastic backing of Hispanic interest groups, which are "are helping drive this open-borders policy not for reasons that have anything to do with the national interest" but for "increasing their numbers and having political clout and so on."
"They do not represent ordinary Hispanic Americans who, like all of the rest of Americans, want to see the laws enforced, want this to be a country that follows the rule of law, and that takes care of its citizens even while we have the most generous legal immigration policy in the world," she said.