Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) is spearheading a measure to ensure the Biden administration does not pay reparations to illegal immigrant families.
On Thursday, Blackburn joined her Montana GOP colleague Steve Daines and a number of other Republican senators in co-sponsoring the amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for the next fiscal year.
The possibility that the federal government could pay settlements to immigrant families separated at the border during the Trump administration first came to light in an October 28 Wall Street Journal report. According to the Journal piece, the U.S. Departments of Justice, Homeland Security and Health and Human Services have mulled making payments that could total nearly $1 million per family (or $450,000 per individual).
The prospect of reparations was spurred by litigation filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of children who were allegedly “suffering from severe trauma as a result of their forcible separation from their parents.” The Biden White House reportedly considered paying settlements to these families even though their crossing of the border illicitly constituted both a civil transgression and a criminal act under the Immigration and Nationality Act.
“Joe Biden wants to give illegal aliens over four times more money than our Gold Star families that have paid the ultimate sacrifice,” Blackburn said in a statement. “It is downright shameful that time and again President Biden chooses to put illegals over law abiding and hardworking Americans. President Biden is not only encouraging, but paying immigrants almost half a million apiece to break the law.”
As Blackburn and her Senate allies offer their amendment, Biden himself is denying ever wanting to issue settlements to illegal aliens. The day before the amendment was introduced, Fox News White House reporter Peter Doocy asked the president whether such reparations would incentivize illegal immigration.
Biden responded, “If you guys keep sending that garbage out, yeah,” falsely implying that Fox initially publicized the story. “But it’s not true.”
Later on Wednesday, ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero contradicted Biden’s denial.
“President Biden may not have been fully briefed about the actions of his very own Justice Department as it carefully deliberated and considered the crimes committed against thousands of families separated from their children as an intentional governmental policy,” Romero said. “But if he follows through on what he said, the president is abandoning a core campaign promise to do justice for the thousands of separated families.”
The ACLU’s gainsaying of the president prompted Robert Law, regulatory affairs director of the the restrictionist Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), to quip, “In its frustration, the ACLU appears to have lifted the veil on what many critics of the Biden administration have thought all year: Joe Biden is not in charge of his own administration.”
Law has opined that Congress should investigate who in the federal government has been engaged in talks regarding potential settlements with illegal entrants and their attorneys. He has also suggested lawmakers should press the ACLU to reveal whether the organization has taken up the illegals’ case pro bono or if the organization has hoped to receive a cut of the settlements. (The ACLU bills itself as a “nonprofit and nonpartisan” association.)
Blackburn and other pro-border-security senators have noted that illegal aliens are now coming into the U.S. at the highest rate in decades. A report by CIS pointed out that monthly apprehensions of migrants at the border exceeded 212,000 this July, a higher total for any point since April 2000.
The senator also announced yesterday that she is joining her Oklahoma Republican colleague Jim Inhofe in reintroducing the WALL Act. First introduced in December 2018, the bill would fund construction of fencing along the entire U.S. border with Mexico and dedicate particular funding sources to do so.
The WALL Act would nix at least $25 billion of tax credits and federal entitlement spending on illegal immigrants, levy a $3,000-minimum fine on each unlawful entrant and charge a $300 fee on every illegal worker filing taxes in the U.S. The legislation would require that beneficiaries of refundable tax credits like the Earned Income Tax Credit or the Child Tax Credit have a work-eligible social security number; it would also demand proof of citizenship from welfare beneficiaries.
“During my visit to the southern border last month, I saw firsthand that our nation is in crisis because of President Biden’s open border agenda,” Blackburn said. “Along with my colleagues in the Senate, I am taking action to keep the White House’s radical policy agenda from making every state a border state and every town a border town.”
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Bradley Vasoli is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Brad on Twitter at @BVasoli. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Marsha Blackburn” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0.
