HOUSTON — Colin Allred has made a center point of his campaign supporting an immigration bill that would codify catch and release and not deliver real results and was not nearly strong enough to adequately address the crisis at our southern border.
This bill would have codified a new catch-and-release policy and normalized up to 5,000 illegal crossing encounters a day. The emergency authority contained in the bill, which was supposed to tame the millions streaming over our border, would have only operated for a limited number of days per year and would completely disappear after three years.
It also would have given immediate work permits to those who claim asylum and pass their initial screening, even if they entered illegally, and provided taxpayer-funded lawyers to unaccompanied minors, and it would have dedicated billions of taxpayer dollars to sanctuary cities and the nonprofits, enabling this unprecedented level of illegal immigration.
That is just the tip of the iceberg of what made this bill so bad.
SEN. CRUZ’S ACTION ON IMMIGRATION:
This bill would have codified a new catch-and-release policy and normalized up to 5,000 illegal crossing encounters a day. The emergency authority contained in the bill, which was supposed to tame the millions streaming over our border, would have only operated for a limited number of days per year and would completely disappear after three years.
It also would have given immediate work permits to those who claim asylum and pass their initial screening, even if they entered illegally, and provided taxpayer-funded lawyers to unaccompanied minors, and it would have dedicated billions of taxpayer dollars to sanctuary cities and the nonprofits, enabling this unprecedented level of illegal immigration.
That is just the tip of the iceberg of what made this bill so bad.
SEN. CRUZ’S ACTION ON IMMIGRATION:
- Worked hand in hand with President Trump to secure the border, achieving the lowest rate of illegal immigration in 45 years
- Authored Kate’s Law, which would impose a mandatory minimum sentence of five years for convicted felons who enter the country illegally.
- Authored the Justice for Jocelyn Act, which would crack down on ATD by requiring every ICE detention bed to be filled, and, if filled, would require the Secretary of DHS to exhaust all reasonable efforts to keep an alien in custody.
- Introduced the Secure the Border Act, which would provide physical and technological border improvements, manpower assistance to Border Patrol and ICE Enforcement Removal Operations, and protection to families seeking entry at the border as well as unaccompanied alien children. It also punishes visa overstays, reforms immigration parole, asylum, and legal immigration workforce issues, and prevents uncontrolled alien flows into the United States.
- Introduced a resolution denouncing the Biden administration’s disastrous open border policies for allowing more than nine million illegal immigrant encounters into the United States.
- Introduced the Citizen Ballot Protection Act, which would ensure states have the authority to verify that only American citizens are voting in federal elections.
- Introduced the Agent Raul Gonzalez Officer Safety Act, which protects our brave men and women of law enforcement by criminalizing fleeing from agents or officers in a high-speed chase
- Authored and passed two border-related amendments to mandate real-time, operational data sharing between the Coast Guard and Customs and Border Protection in order to enhance border security and drug/migrant interdictions, and to provide the Coast Guard at Station South Padre with air-based surveillance technology to better monitor the maritime border between the Texas and Mexico coast and enhance interdictions of illegal smugglers and fishermen
A Cruz Campaign spokesperson issued the following statement.
“There is no room for ‘feel good’ legislation when addressing issues as serious as the crisis at our southern border, and that’s what the bill that Rep. Allred supported was. Sen. Cruz has spent his time in the Senate introducing legislation that would actually provide solutions to what we’re seeing happening at our border, not signing off on legislation that would, in reality, make the problem worse.”
“There is no room for ‘feel good’ legislation when addressing issues as serious as the crisis at our southern border, and that’s what the bill that Rep. Allred supported was. Sen. Cruz has spent his time in the Senate introducing legislation that would actually provide solutions to what we’re seeing happening at our border, not signing off on legislation that would, in reality, make the problem worse.”