LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – Despite President Joe Biden’s executive order on Tuesday to tighten the southern U.S. border, some Michigan lawmakers are not counting on his administration to keep residents safe.
On Wednesday, the Michigan House Freedom Caucus introduced a five-bill package along with a resolution to empower law enforcement to crack down on what they called “widespread illegal immigration.” State Representatives Neil Friske (R-Charlevoix), Steve Carra (R-Three Rivers), Matt Maddock (R-Milford), and James DeSana (R-Carleton) made the announcement Wednesday morning.
What’s in the bill package?
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The bills would require all Michigan law enforcement agencies to comply with U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement detainers, make it a state-level criminal offense to be present in Michigan without official legal status, punish local government entities for not enforcing federal immigration laws, and bar any local policy that would prohibit police officers from questioning a person’s immigration status.
“The federal government has left us no option but to act. There are a historic number of migrants flooding across our international borders while the people in charge of our country would rather cater to radical protestors than enforce immigration law,” said Friske. “If the federal government won’t close the border and begin mass deportations, the burden falls on us to do everything we can to protect our communities.”
How is illegal immigration impacting Michigan?
Michigan is not immune to the problems of a porous southern border. A 25-year-old illegal immigrant from Mexico is on trial for the murder of his girlfriend Ruby Garcia. Brandon Ortiz-Vite is accused of shooting her and dumping her body along US-131. In addition, another illegal immigrant is facing deportation after allegedly breaking into a home, raping two young girls, then evading authorities for several days.
It’s not just the Biden administration whom Republicans blamed. They also denounced Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s subsidy program to entice illegal immigrant to set up permanent shop in Michigan.
“We are currently incentivizing illegal immigration with taxpayer-funded programs and disincentivizing legal immigration with bureaucratic complications. What we should be doing is embracing legal immigration by eliminating immigration caps and ending mass migration by eliminating the taxpayer-funded incentives to illegal immigration,” Carra said.
What is Gov. Whitmer saying?
Gov. Whitmer gushed about Biden’s executive order in a press release on Tuesday, but in partisan fashion blamed Republicans.
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“President Biden sent Congress a comprehensive immigration reform plan on day one, and repeatedly requested more border resources from Congress, only to be blocked by Republicans,” Whitmer said. “They should stop playing political games and work with the administration on a coordinated, bipartisan federal solution to fix our broken system.”
Whitmer failed to mention the two previous border bills voted down by GOP members in Congress included foreign aid as well. In addition, she appeared to forget that on the first day in office, Biden ended the National Emergency Declaration enacted by Trump administration to shift Pentagon money to materials to construct the border wall. Last year, the Biden administration ended a COVID-19 policy that shut down a majority of asylum avenues.
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