Welcome to the Border Crisis, Mr. Congressman
Members of Congress are heading to Texas to visit border area detention facilities.
Via Fox News:
The Department of Health and Human Services is allowing members of Congress to visit a Texas immigration detention center amid growing concerns about access to such facilities housing the recent surge of children who have illegally crossed the U.S.-Mexico border.
The tour is scheduled to take place Tuesday morning. The site will be a temporary shelter at the Joint Base San Antonio Lackland, according to The Blaze news website.
Although HHS is allowing the visit, the delegation will have to abide by a series of strict rules and regulations:
As with the previous tours, the HHS has issues rules for the Lackland, Texas, tour that includes no recording devices, no interacting with staffers and the children and no questions until after the tour.
Sure, your representative isn’t allowed to actually speak to the majority of the people dealing with this on a daily basis, but if they’re really concerned about thousands of children being put into the hands of the cartels and sex traffickers, they should just support sweeping immigration reform:
[White House spokesman Josh] Earnest also said that people concerned about the border problems should support the Senate’s comprehensive immigration bill, which provides more funding for border enforcement measures. Republicans in the House oppose that bill, in large part because they fear it would create a pathway to legal status in the United States and give Obama the option of adopting tougher border measures.
More funding won’t fix the problem, though. President Obama has made it clear through the policies he has supported (deferred action programs, for example) that his Administration has no plan to enforce even our existing immigration laws. This attitude has caused would-be immigrants from countries like Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras to put over 50,000 children into the hands of the cartels and human traffickers–and some have not survived the journey.
President Obama is set to request $2 billion in additional funding for the border–yet has no plans to visit the Rio Grande Valley on his upcoming visit to Texas. His handlers cite scheduling issues as a reason to skip the visit–he’ll be at fundraisers in Dallas for the majority of his trip.
While the $2 billion will help law enforcement agencies in Texas and elsewhere to gain control of the situation, we won’t see an end to the border crisis until President Obama, and his Democrat coalition in Congress, reverses course and enforces the law.
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Comments
While the $2 billion will help law enforcement agencies in Texas and elsewhere to gain control of the situation, we won’t see an end to the border crisis until President Obama, and his Democrat coalition in Congress, reverses course and enforces the law.
This the most naive thing I have read since Meghan McCardle’s defense of the IRS hard-drive crash.
Let me help out.
Obama has created this crisis to effect change. He attempted to do it with Fast And Furious in create an environment for halting gun sales.
He will not use that extra 2 billion to secure the border, but will divert it to anyplace but that–then he will declare victory and the border secure, while lying through his teeth.
You are dealing with a Marxist. Wake up, please.
the delegation will have to abide by a series of strict rules
Let me guess … Potemkin detention center? Congress sluts, bow to Dear Leader and be good.
send steve stockman, then watch the fireworks fly.
Can you see it now? Congressmen filing by the confines where the children are held, like looking at so many animals in a zoo while the zoo keepers make sure that no one goes near the animals?
But of course, this Administration thinks it has the right to dictate orders to Congressmen; leave your cell phone behind, no speaking to the children, do not touch the exhibit.
Last Wednesday (July 3rd) Rep. Mike McCaul held a Congressional hearing in McAllen, Texas, on the illegal children. Gov. Perry spoke, and answered questions, for an hour. While there are 17 Border Patrol agents per mile between El Paso and the end of the California border with Mexico, there are 7 Border Patrol agents per mile between El Paso and Brownville, Texas. One should ask; was this by design that the Texas border has been left so short on man power? He also said that the State of Texas, on its own, has spent over $500 million on border protection since 2007. We, the State of Texas, is now spending $1.3 million per week to try to shut the border down and slow the flow of illegals into the Texas sectors. Numerous letters sent to Obama advising him that the situation on the Texas border was reaching critical mass. No response.
Two things about the hearing (I watched all 3 1/2 hours on CCTV) were:
when a Congressman asked the head of Border Patrol, Laredo, if the the so-called “family” members that these children are being turned over to had had background checks on them, the Border Patrol agent replied he did not know. WHAT??? Who, exactly, are we turning these kids over to? Drug cartel/gangbangers? How is HHS proving these kids are actually related to the people HHS is turning them over to? The turn-around time is 72 hours for children who are claimed. How many will wind up in domestic servitude or prostitution because HHS is turning them over to the wrong people?
a woman, apparently from Honduras, stated she had paid $7,000.00 per child to get her three grandchildren brought up from Honduras. That’s $21,000.00, boys and girls. Do you have any idea how far $21,000.00 would go in Honduras?
Henry Cuellar (D-Tx) has said these children need to be repatriated. 1 in 3 have been sexually molested, or worse. Other Congresmen have reported that the children are saying they want to go home to [Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala] their parents and don’t know why they have been brought here.
These unfortunate children are being put on buses and planes and are infected with scabies, TB, measles, whooping cough and a number of other infectious diseases that we have basically eradicated in the United States. Are they to be placed in our public schools where school officials are not allowed to ask for birth certificates or shot records? To fundamentally transform this nation, is Obama putting our children at high risk?
Is he putting our children at risk? Yes, and on purpose. He is afraid to go to the border because he is afraid he will contact a disease.
From the pics I’ve seen, it looks like many of them ARE gangbangers.
can we hope that these congressmen as a group will show some courage and defy the DHS rules? What is DHS going to do? Arrest them? Put them in handcuffs? Show some balls defy them !!!!
DHS?! What have the DHS got to do with any of this? Why do you bring them up?
“the delegation will have to abide by a series of strict rules and regulations”
Silly me, I thought our elected representatives were supposed to be running the country.
My bad. Obviously, it’s the bureaucrats handing out the orders, saying what can and can not be seen by anyone, etc.
No, actually, Congressmen are not supposed to be running the country; the president is. It’s right there in the constitution; you have read it, haven’t you? HHS works for him and obeys his orders, not those of any Congressman. If they don’t like it, let them hold a committee hearing.
So what happens if a member of Congress pulls out a recording device? Speaks to a staffer? Speaks to a child? Asks an impertinent question during the tour?
Explain to me exactly what happens at that point, how exactly HHS and the White House think they will punish that member of Congress.
And what happens when the member of Congress discusses both the ‘transgression’ and the punishment on FOX News.
The only man who has ever stood up to Obama is the congressman who yelled, ‘You Lie!”
If only that man where speaker of the house.
HHS has just shown the one of the reasons it needs to be dismantled. Seems like it just might be what the paranoid would call Obama’s private army.
In what sense can HHS be called an army, private or otherwise? What force does it wield? What weapons?
So if the members of Congress, (the People’s representatives) disobey HHS “rules”, what are they going to do? Shoot them?
“Accidents” happen.
No, they won’t shoot them, they’ll remove them as trespassers. Just as you would do if you admitted someone to your property on certain conditions, and that person broke them.
I probably missed it. Why can’t the visitors talk to anyone?
I just wonder who or what gives “Homeland” Security the right to tell elected officials where they can and cannot go? In the days after 9/11, when this totally useless Department was formed were they given that much power? And how stupid was that?
George Bush, the disaster that never stops.
It is government property. They can keep Congressmen out the same way they can keep anyone out, and the same way you can keep them out of your property. There is no law that lets Congressmen go wherever they like.
And what have Homeland Security got to do with this, anyway? Who mentioned them? Why did you suddenly bring them up, or George Bush?
People here seem to imagine that Congressmen have some sort of legal right to go anywhere they like, and inspect anything that catches their interest. Well, it ain’t so. It’s never been so. Congressmen have no more right than you or me to walk up to a government facility and demand admission. Or than they have to make the same demand at your place of businesss.
Wrong. Congress has the right of oversight. There is currently a controversial executive-branch action being run without legal sanction and behind closed doors. Congress has the right to see what is really going on. This is not a classified operation, but even then, Congress has oversight.
Furthermore, Congress has a right to more than a Potemkin Village tour, which is what this is. These children are terrified, they have been kidnapped and literally railroaded here. Many have TB and are coughing up blood. Congress has the right to see this. Hell, the media have the right to see this, and any reporter worth his salt would be on this like a hound dog. There is no justification for secrecy other than to hide Obama from scrutiny.
Bulldust. First of all, where is this “right of oversight” in the constitution?
Second, what does this “right” consist of? Congress has the right to hold hearings. Fine, let it hold as many hearings as it likes. Let it subpoena the department to send it someone to explain what’s going on. But no congressman, ever, has the right to barge into a government facility and demand a guided tour. That is trespass. First because a congressman is not Congress, and does not have any of the rights that Congress as a whole has. Second, because even the whole congress has no such right; even if the entire House and Senate were to show up at the door of a government facility, they would have no right to be admitted.
It makes no difference whether the operation is classified or not. All that matters is that they have no right to set foot on the property without permission. And they certainly have no right to a tour. The only right they have is to hold a committtee meeting in Washington, and make people come and testify to them. That is all.
The executive power in the USA belongs to the president, and only the president. And that is how it is supposed to be.
Sure, they don’t have the right to barge in unannounced. But where do you get that they have to stay in DC? You’re saying that oversight doesn’t include the right to literally see what is taking place.
Do you imagine that the executive branch gets to do whatever it wants while keeping Congress out of the loop indefinitely? Where in the Constitution do you find that? Oh, yes. When Dear Leader wants to do it, Milhouse (Nixon?) says it’s OK.
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay. Gettin’ my Nixon on today!
1. There is no right of oversight in the constitution. This “right” derives from fact that Congress passes the government’s budgets, so it wants to know what the money is being spent on. So it holds hearings, and has done so for 220 years, and presidents have gone along. Where do you find a right for Congress, even the whole thing, to inspect any government facility?
2. In any case, one congressman, or twenty or a hundred, are not Congress, and have no “power of oversight” or any other power that Congress has. Congressmen are just ordinary people. They can’t be arrested while in DC or traveling to and fro (except for felonies), and they can’t be sued for anything they say on the floor of their house. Other than that, they have no special powers or privileges. Showing up at an INS facility and saying “I’m a congressman” is exactly the same as doing so and saying “I’m on the board of WalMart”, or Exxon.
2. Do you imagine that the executive branch gets to do whatever it wants while keeping Congress out of the loop indefinitely? Where in the Constitution do you find that?
Where in the constitution do you see that it can’t? If Congress doesn’t like what the president is doing, it has a remedy.
With no. 1, you agree that oversight is understood. But now to let it go beyond DC. The normal process is to hold hearings, but part of this often includes inspections, e.g., trips to Benghazi. If Congress suspects the exec is hiding something, it can be a long and arduous process to get to the bottom, but Congress eventually gets there — the “remedy,” as you say.
The present situation is new to the Republic: foreign agents carrying deadly communicable diseases are pouring across the border, and the exec is not stopping it, not giving account for it (stonewalling), and is silencing all involved. There is an immediacy that requires more than committee hearings.
The answer here is for Congress to join public demonstrations, like in Murrieta, and force the exec’s hand.
There is no right of oversight in the constitution. None at all. Congresses have merely told the executive that if you want us to pass the budget, you’ll have to tell us what the money is being spent on, or next year you’ll find yourself with no money.
If Congress, or one house, or a committee, wants to conduct an inspection of a facility, it can pass a resolution asking HHS to allow it, and HHS will have the option of either agreeing or refusing. If the house is sufficiently angry about that, it may threaten to cut HHS’s budget for next year, and that will probably bring about a different response. That’s not a matter of law, but of practicality. But none of this is relevant to any individual congressman, or any 20 or 200 individual congressmen. So long as they are acting on their own they have no more “right of oversight” than you or me.
There are no “foreign agents” flooding over the border. The children coming are not anybody’s agents, they’re just looking for a decent life. They are not an army, and they are not invaders. And there’s no evidence that they’re carrying deadly communicable diseases.