Vice President Kamala Harris has pledged she will “quickly remove those [immigrants] who arrive here unlawfully,” but her administration is spending millions of dollars to make it harder for federal law enforcement to do that.
The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Immigration Detention Ombudsman is, as first reported by Fox News’s Bill Melugin, using taxpayer money on southern border billboards that offer free legal services to illegal immigrants facing deportation.
“Your brother in immigration custody has rights, we’re here to help,” one billboard says. Above and below “brother” are other possible relations who might also need legal help, including “uncle,” “neighbor,” “father,” “friend,” “mother,” and gender-inclusive “partner.”
“Time and again, we’ve seen DHS put an open borders agenda ahead of its mission to safeguard American families,” Rep. Tony Gonzalez (R-TX) said in a statement. “Whether it’s FEMA splurging hundreds of millions of dollars on migrant housing or OIDO running ads like this, our government is hemorrhaging money on the wrong priorities. It’s time for Congress to pull the plug on programs like these.”
The OIDO was created by Democratic congress members in 2019 to make it more difficult for both Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol to deport illegal immigrants. In addition to paying lawyers to fight individual deportations, OIDO staff arrange sympathetic media coverage of illegal immigrants and urge sheriffs in border communities not to cooperate with ICE. It is a radical Left, open-border nonprofit organization working within the government, paid for by taxpayers, with the sole goal of thwarting the DHS’s mission to secure the border.
Former President Donald Trump has promised that, if reelected, he will immediately dismantle the agency.
“Kamala is now running billboards near the Border advertising FREE Legal Services for Illegal Alien Criminals,” Trump wrote on X. “When I win, the billboards are coming down, and the Migrant Gangs are going home!”
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Harris has not offered any statement on the OIDO, nor has she taken questions about it. That should change before Election Day. As California’s attorney general, she told local sheriffs not to cooperate with ICE, just as the OIDA is doing with sheriffs. Harris should be pushed to say whether she believes sheriffs in border communities and throughout the country should be encouraged to work with ICE. More importantly, she should be pushed to say if she will use the Department of Justice and the DHS to force local law enforcement agencies to cooperate with federal law enforcement in order to follow through with all the deportations she has said she intends to carry out.
In 2019, the Democratic Party was still turning radically to the left. This was when Harris promised to use taxpayer dollars to give free surgeries to transgender criminals and to decriminalize border crossings. She has, in theory, walked back from both these positions. However, if she wants to convince swing voters she really has changed and is no longer beholden to radical open border advocates, then she should come out, join Trump, and call for an end to the OIDO.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
