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Photo by U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
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Former acting secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Chad Wolf, claims that Joe Biden’s actions on US immigration are ‘against the law’. During an interview with Fox News, Wolf, whose own appointment as acting secretary of the DHS was ruled unlawful, described Biden’s deportation moratorium in particular ‘very concerning’.
As promised in the build up to his inauguration, President Biden has submitted a comprehensive immigration reform bill to Congress. The former vice president to Barack Obama has promised a pathway to citizenship for DACA immigrants, a reversal of Trump’s Muslim-majority US visa ban and suspended deportations for 100 days.
However, Chad Wolf, who resigned from his DHS role amid scrutiny about his appointment and in the wake of the Capitol riots, was skeptical about Biden’s US immigration actions.
Fox News interview
During the interview with Fox News, he asked and answered three questions: Are Biden’s orders lawful? Do they make the job of DHS officials more difficult? Do they encourage more individuals to cross the border?
In answering his own questions, Wolf said: “When you answer all three of those questions, particularly when you look at the 100-day moratorium on deportation, there’s concern for each of those questions. Absolutely it goes against the law.”
According to Wolf, the 100-day suspension of deportations in particular is ‘very, very concerning’. The former DHS acting secretary claimed that the new administration is ‘choosing to focus on other areas of concern while criminals, in most cases, are getting a grace period before being deported.’
Wolf said: “They’re [the Biden administration] moving resources to the border to process immigration, to process asylum claims. I think in a COVID-like environment that’s very dangerous.”
Under Wolf, the DHS was reportedly on a path to return individuals within two hours of crossing the US border and he urged the Biden administration to acknowledge ‘the real concerns and threats’ to continue developing efficient border security.
Homeland security
“This is about homeland security. It’s not just good policy for politics. They need to make sure that that border is secure, that we don’t go back to catch and release, that we’re not releasing individuals that may have COVID into American border communities to put additional strain on our health care system,” Wolf said.
“Hopefully, they’re looking at all that and they’re understanding that. It’s very dangerous and it’s very complex,” Wolf added.
On day one of his presidency, Biden tore into Trump’s US immigration legacy, the most notable of which was pressing pause on the construction of Trump’s anti-immigrant border wall.
Wolf said that this was concerning because it will ‘make things easier’ for Mexican cartels to smuggle contraband into the US, while inviting illegal immigrants to cross the border with very little resistance.
The Biden administration’s press secretary, Jen Psaki, said that the last four years of US immigration policy have been focused on funding a border wall that ‘does not work’. However, Wolf refuted the claims, saying: “They are just not true.”
Wolf said: “Saying that the US does not need a border wall in areas where immigrant traffic is high, is very naïve.”
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