Up until a month ago, Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) would have been a fine choice for Senate Republican leadership. But that all changed when he introduced legislation that would have weakened border security by mandating catch and release.
Worse, Lankford appears either not to understand what is in his own legislation or to be dishonest in describing what is in it. Either option is not a good look for Lankford and should disqualify him from becoming Senate Republican Conference vice chairman, a post he is now seeking.
In his summary of the legislation, Lankford claims his bill would “Detain & Deport” all immigrants who illegally cross the southern border. But if you actually read the legislation, it does the exact opposite: It mandates catch and release for almost all immigrants arrested for illegally crossing the southern border.
Let’s start off with Lankford’s claim that his bill “mandates a complete shutdown of the border.” This is completely false. The legislation does create a temporary new authority to deny immigrants entry into the country, but this new authority sunsets in just a few years, and more importantly, the legislation specifically allows the president to ignore it completely at any time if he decides it is “in the national interest” to do so (see page 218). In other words, it doesn’t mandate anything. Biden is perfectly free to ignore it.
But Lankford’s fake shutdown mandate is just temporary. Far worse is the damage his legislation would have done permanently to the processing of immigrants arrested for illegally crossing the southern border.
Under current law, the president must detain all immigrants arrested for illegally crossing the southern border until their asylum claims are heard. Due to a series of liberal court decisions, law enforcement cannot detain most immigrants arrested at the southern border for the length of time needed to hear their asylum claim.
President Donald Trump eventually solved this problem by having immigrants wait in Mexico for their asylum claim to be heard. President Joe Biden undid Trump’s solution by abusing his parole authority to release immigrants into the United States.
Lankford’s bill claims to solve this problem in two ways:
- Lankford claims the bill clarifies the definition of humanitarian parole “to stop the daily flagrant abuse of the authority.” It does no such thing. Instead, it preserves all the same loopholes the previous definition has (see page 187);
- The Lankford bill creates a brand new “noncustodial removal proceeding” that resolves immigrants asylum claims in “weeks, not years.” Lankford admits that “some family groups are hard to detain, so those groups will have alternative to detention,” but the reality is worse than that. The legislation empowers the president to process every immigrant through this new “noncustodial” process. And all immigrants processed through this new system MUST BE RELEASED. It’s right there on page 166, “shall be released.” Instead of “detain and deport,” in reality, the Lankford bill mandates “catch and release.”
If you want to know what Lankford’s new system would look like in practice, just look at the suspect in Laken Riley’s death, Jose Ibarra.
Ibarra crossed with his wife and her child. As a “family group that is hard to detain,” they would have been placed in Lankford’s new noncustodial removal proceedings. This means they would have been enrolled in Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Alternative to Detention program.
This is the same program in which Ibarra’s brother Diego was enrolled after he was charged with illegally crossing the southern border. After just two weeks in the program, Diego Ibarra allegedly cut off his ankle bracelet, and ICE removed him from the program.
Note that after Ibarra was removed from the program, the Biden administration made no effort to find, arrest, and deport Ibarra. This is a written Biden administration policy under the Mayorkas memo.
Importantly, the Lankford bill did nothing to undo the Mayorkas memo.
This means regardless of whether or not Jose Ibarra would ever have met with an asylum officer within the new 90-day time frame under the noncustodial removal proceeding, he could have simply cut off his ankle bracelet and disappeared if the asylum officer ruled against him.
And since he would not be in custody, ICE would not detain or deport him. He would be free again.
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The Lankford bill would have done nothing to stop the current border crisis, nor would it have saved Laken Riley’s life.
That Lankford is suggesting otherwise is shameful and should be disqualifying.