If the courts don't get in the way of the White House, it will be able to continue making strides in immigration reform, Acting Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Ken Cuccinelli said Thursday.
"(President Donald Trump's) leadership is a critical element here that's allowing us to succeed over, say, the last six months, and if the courts don't get in our way, we'll continue to succeed," Cuccinelli told Fox News' "Fox and Friends." "But long-term change won't come until Congress engages and helps us fix some of these loopholes."
Failures in immigration policy are putting law enforcement officers at risk nationally, said Cucinelli, but those problems are "solvable" if Congress will engage in fixing failures in immigration policy.
"I'm a great supporter of law enforcement, and law enforcement agencies all over this country deal with the downside of the failure of our immigration system," said Cuccinelli. "A lot of those people in Congress have done nothing. They complained, but they've done nothing to solve the problem. And we've laid out solutions from experts for months and years and, yet, they ignore it, they ignore it, they ignore it."
Cuccinelli also reacted to the Democratic presidential debates, pointing out that most Americans do not believe in allowing federal benefits for people who are in the country illegally.
"That is not something (Democrats) have shied away from in the past, by my observation, and ordinary Americans find (Democratic) positions, in terms of trying to get the support of the extreme left, shocking," said Cuccinelli. "I can't imagine politically that will be helpful."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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