What is so confusing is to listen to the President talk in his conference room at the White House about this and acknowledge the nature of the problem. and then to see that the White House threatened to veto the legislation that the House was considering. There are a lot of mixed messages. to say the least. with regard to the Presidents commitment to actually enforce the law. We know that in too many instances he has simply refused to enforce the law. and our immigration law is just one of those. But to hear such mixed messages out of the White House and the administration that yes. we need to actwe should not just write a blank check. We ought to do the policy reforms with it that would solve the problem. I will just add that in talking to Secretary JohnsonI dont think I am disclosing any confidence he himself wouldnt repeatthere is actually an earlier experience we had in 2005 and 2006 which I think is very instructive and which we have discussed. Secretary Chertoff was Secretary of Homeland Security when President Bush was in the White House and we had a surge of people coming from countries other than Mexico. socalled OTMsin this case Brazilians. In 2005. we saw a surge of 30.000 Brazilian immigrants at the southwestern border. Upon investigation. they realized the reason we saw a surge in these numbers was because of a policy known as catch and releasecolloquially. In other words. people came to the country. were caught. given notice to appear at a future court hearing. and they simply disappeared and melted into the great American landscape. knowing they would successfully immigrate illegally into the United States. It is the same policy of catch and release that is causing this surge of unaccompanied minors. not to mention single adults with young children. We dont have adequate detention facilities for them. so they are released. given a bus ticket. and told to come back for their court hearing a year or more later.
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