CV NEWS FEED // U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) this month released their Fiscal Year (FY) 2023 Annual Report, revealing what a former congressman is calling “massive humanitarian and legal crises” at the southern border.
CatholicVote’s Senior Political Advisor. Rep. Timothy Huelskamp, R-KS, (2011-2017) weighed in on the ICE Report from a Catholic perspective in a conversation with CatholicVote. He discussed what the data mean for immigrants themselves, for American citizens, and for Catholic voters.
“The ICE FY 2023 Annual Report details some of the massive humanitarian and legal crises occurring at our southern border and throughout the nation under President Joe Biden,” Huelskamp explained. “By intentional refusal to enforce immigration laws, the Biden Administration has implemented an open, lawless border with Mexico in less than three years.”
“Since 2020, the Report details massive spikes in border encounters and arrests, but a shocking decline in criminal convictions, criminal deportations, and pending criminal convictions. What is not in the report may be far worse,” Huelskamp commented. “The Administration makes no attempt to estimate how many illegal immigrants are streaming across our borders undetected.”
Catholic voters should pay attention to the border crisis and the report especially in light of Catholic social teaching, Huelskamp argued.
“Catholics are often told that the unprecedented immigration crisis evidenced in this Report is the price of ‘welcoming the stranger’ – it is not,” Huelskamp said. “Every nation and its politicians – including the U.S. and Mexico – has the duty and obligation to secure its borders and enforce immigration laws for the common good of the nation.”
“The Biden Administration is failing this responsibility, and Catholic social teaching demands that Catholic voters hold them responsible for the humanitarian and legal disaster created by an open border policy,” he continued.
Huelskamp explained that the open border also harms immigrants themselves, especially because the open border enables human traffickers and drug cartels.
“America and Mexico have surrendered their border to the drug and trafficking cartels. Lured by the promise of a better life, many of the immigrants pay large sums of cash to the cartels and their coyotes to be transported to and beyond the border,” Huelskamp wrote:
In return, they are often exploited by the cartels and American criminal interests for human trafficking, forced to work dangerous, underpaid jobs in a shadow economy, and are pawns in the illegal drug trade such as methyl.
These immigrants are compelled to abandon older family members; leave behind aging, hollowed-out communities with few young people to support the local economy; and further cement the power of the evil cartels.
There are also several effects of the immigration crisis that are usually unknown, but real, for ordinary Americans, Huelskamp explained. “Tax-paying, law-abiding Americans are being forced to pay for massive welfare spending increases, victimized by increasing criminal activity, and are exposed to potential national security threats from hostile nations,” he wrote.
“During FY 2023, immigrants from more than 170 countries were detected passing over our border – aliens from even more counties slipped through undetected,” he went on:
The federal government temporarily houses some immigrants in 150 detention facilities but releases most into America with little to no supervision, follow-up, tracking, or protection from the drug and trafficking cartels controlling the border.
As a result, this Report reveals our government has released a record 6.2 million noncitizens into the interior that have final or pending orders for removal – a 30.3% increase in just one year.
Huelskamp noted that “these detected immigrants” combined “with unknown millions of undetected aliens” are a total number greater “than the population of 33 states”.
These immigrants “are overwhelming the social net and community fabric in nearly every state,” he continued:
Indeed, some of the largest cities in America far from the border, such as New York, Chicago, and Denver, once proudly self-proclaimed sanctuary cities, are now begging for relief from this massive influx of noncitizens that has overwhelmed their social safety net.
Democratic leaders in these states criticized Biden for his response to the border crisis. Some who formerly advocated for open-border immigration policies have even called on Congress “to pass ‘a limit on who can come across the border.’”
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Migration Chairman Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso called for “comprehensive” immigration reform in May of 2023.
“Arguably,” the current crisis “is what ‘comprehensive’ immigration reform looks like,” Huelskamp argued:
Despite no changes in the law, the Biden Administration has opened America’s border by lax border enforcement, rescinding orders of the previous Administration, and accepting millions of noncitizens with no background checks, often with the approval, sometimes with silent agreement, but always with increasing government payments to the USCCB and Catholic Charities.
