Yes, Bennet's mother, Susanne Christine Klejman, was born in the Warsaw Ghetto (where Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany imprisoned Polish Jews during WWII), in 1938. Her parents survived and she emigrated to America in 1950.
Bennet's father, Douglas Bennet, is a Christian. Under Jewish religious law, anyone born to a Jewish mother is automatically Jewish, including those with Christian fathers. Michael Bennet married his wife via an Episcopal priest, and says he believes in God, but observes neither Jewish nor Christian religious rituals.
Castro wants an overhaul of the pathway to citizenship for immigrants, especially for DACA recipients. He criticized a policy shift under President George W. Bush that allows immigrants to be charged in the criminal court rather than civil. Castro wants to split ICE in half, and keep "national security functions such as human and drug trafficking and anti-terrorism investigations within the Department of Homeland Security."
We need to look deeply at American foreign policy in Latin America and how we have contributed to situations where there was level of despair because too often in our foreign policy, just like in our domestic, our government has done more to be supporting short-term profits for major corporate interests than people.
FACT-CHECK: It's correct that lethal drugs do come across the border, and drug overdose deaths are up: 70,237 people died from an overdose in 2017. But Trump--in pushing for a border wall--tends to ignore that the vast majority of hard drugs from Mexican cartels come into the U.S. through legal ports of entry, which wouldn't be affected by a wall.
According to the 2018 National Drug Threat Assessment by the DEA, "The most common method employed by these [Mexican drug cartels] involves transporting illicit drugs through US POEs (legal port-of-entry crossing points) in passenger vehicles with concealed compartments or commingled with legitimate goods on tractor trailers." The Trump administration knows this: the DHS Secretary said in April 2017 that illegal drug traffic "mostly comes through the ports of entry."
In its fact check of Trump's State of the Union speech, NPR relayed these assessments: "As for the 'state of our Southern border,' mayors along the Southwest border consistently say that their communities are among the safest in the nation. McAllen TX Mayor Jim Darling asserted that his city is the 3rd safest in Texas, according to FBI crime statistics, and 7th safest in the nation. 'Send social workers to process the asylum-seekers, not soldiers,' Darling said. Eddie Trevino, Cameron County judge in Brownsville, added, 'It is a misconception that the border is insecure. There is no Central American invasion. This is a manufactured crisis.' "
The governor's order covers most of New Mexico's deployed troops, along with Guard members who have traveled from AR, KS, KY, NH, SC, and WI. In all, 118 National Guard troops have been deployed in New Mexico, the governor's office said.
At least five states, including two led by Republicans, rejected the president's call to send troops., with Maryland's Gov. Larry Hogan saying his state wanted nothing to do with the Trump administration policy of separating families at the border.
The savage gang, MS-13, now operates in 20 different American States, and they almost all come through our southern border. Just yesterday, an MS-13 gang member was taken into custody for a fatal shooting in NYC. We are removing these gang members by the thousands, but until we secure our border they're going to keep streaming back in.
This is a moral issue. The lawless state of our southern border is a threat to the safety, security, and financial well-being of all Americans. We have a moral duty to create an immigration system that protects the lives and jobs of our citizens. This includes our obligation to the millions of immigrants living here today, who followed the rules and respected our laws. Legal immigrants enrich our Nation and strengthen our society in countless ways. I want people to come into our country, but they have to come in legally.
Tonight, I am asking you to defend our very dangerous southern border out of love and devotion to our fellow citizens and to our country.
This is a smart, strategic, see-through steel barrier--not just a simple concrete wall. It will be deployed in the areas identified by border agents as having the greatest need, and as these agents will tell you, where walls go up, illegal crossings go way down.
San Diego used to have the most illegal border crossings in the country. In response, and at the request of San Diego residents and political leaders, a strong security wall was put in place. This powerful barrier almost completely ended illegal crossings.
No, Mr. Trump, building a wall is not an emergency.
In terms of immigration in this country, what we need to do is not to waste billions of dollars on a wall, but to finally address the need for comprehensive immigration reform--including a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented people.
It is inhumane, and not what America stands for, that tiny children at the border have been torn away from their parents. It is disgraceful that 1.8 million young people have lost their legal protection under the DACA program because of Trump's actions. It is heartbreaking that almost 11 million undocumented people living in this country worry every day about being deported & separated from their loved ones.
But there was a bigger reason to oppose the border wall. A useless wall on the southern border would be nothing more than a symbol, a monument standing in opposition to not just everything I value, but to the fundamental values upon which this country was built. The Statue of Liberty is the monument that defines to the world who we are. Emma Lazarus's words--"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free"--speak true to our true character: a generous country that respects and embraces those who have made the difficult journey to our shores, often fleeing harm. How could I vote to build what would be little more than a monument, designed to send the cold, hard message "KEEP OUT"?
Democrat Klobuchar, meanwhile, told the Minnesota Public Radio debate audience that federal laws such as allowing sick people to obtain insurance should be continued, said she agrees with a majority of scientists who think climate change is at least partly due to human activity and felt Mexican border security should be a combination of a wall, fence and personnel.
In a rare area of agreement, Klobuchar and Newberger said the federal government needs to find a way to keep prescription medicine costs down.
"While this bill would put Dreamers on a pathway toward citizenship, the appropriation of $25 billion for a border wall is a waste of taxpayer money," she said. "A wall will not secure our border and I remain concerned those billions of dollars may also be used to implement this Administration's anti-immigrant agenda--one that targets California and its residents."
Those close to Harris maintain that Harris has felt passionately for years about [immigration issues]. In particular, they say protecting dreamers has been her top priority since she was elected to the Senate.
Other parts of the order call for hiring 5,000 more Border Patrol agents, building facilities to hold undocumented immigrants near the Mexican border and ending "catch-and-release" protocols, in which immigrants in the United States without documentation are not detained while they await court hearings.
A: Bernie believes America's current immigration system is broken and requires comprehensive reform. An important aspect of immigration reform, according to Bernie, is to establish some pathway to legal residency or citizenship for the 11 million undocumented workers living in the United States so that they need not work and live in the shadows.
Q: What about the border fence?
A: While he believes that border security is important for the country, Bernie doesn't believe that a fence is the way to achieve that security.
Q: What about guest worker visas?
A: Bernie believes that our visa system must protect American jobs instead of simply allowing corporations to score cheap labor via temporary work visas.
TRUMP: If it weren't for me, you wouldn't even be talking about illegal immigration. This was not a subject that was on anybody's mind until I brought it up at my announcement. The fact is, since then, many killings, murders, crime, drugs are pouring across the border, our money going out and the drugs coming in. And I said we need to build a wall, and it has to be built quickly. And I don't mind having a big beautiful door in that wall so that people can come into this country legally. But we need to build a wall, we need to keep illegals out.
And you say to yourself, "How does that help us? Where is that good"? It's not. So I would say, "Let me give you the bad news. Every car and every part manufactured in this plant that comes across the border, we're going to charge you a 35% tax, and that tax is going to be paid simultaneously with the transaction.
Now, if it's not me in the position, here's what's going to happen: They're going to get a call from the donors or from the lobbyist for Ford and say, "I take care of you, and you can't do that to Ford."
I'm using my own money. I'm not using the lobbyists. I'm not using donors. I don't care.
In his January speech to the Iowa Freedom Summit, Trump called for securing the southern border and indicated that he believes half of the undocumented residents in America are criminals. In 2013 at CPAC, the businessman said Republicans should block any path to citizenship or voting status for undocumented immigrants but should expand legal immigration from Europe. In addition, Trump would give a legal status to foreign students who complete a degree at an American university.
Real reform means strong border security, and we can build on the progress my Administration has already made--putting more boots on the southern border than at any time in our history, and reducing illegal crossings to their lowest levels in 40 years.
Real reform means establishing a responsible pathway to earned citizenship--a path that includes passing a background check, paying taxes and a meaningful penalty, learning English, and going to the back of the line behind the folks trying to come here legally.
And real reform means fixing the legal immigration system to cut waiting periods, reduce bureaucracy, and attract the highly-skilled entrepreneurs and engineers that will help create jobs and grow our economy.
Actually, Obama has increased the Border Patrol only modestly since it nearly doubled under George W. Bush, when the number grew from 11,264 in 2005 to 20,119 in Oct. 2008. Under Obama, the number went up to 21,444 by 2011. About 85% of those guards are stationed along the southern border.
It's true that arrests for illegal border crossings have decreased since Obama took office--from 556,041 in fiscal 2009 to 340,252 in fiscal 2011. (Those are nationwide figures, although more than 98% of arrests occur along the Mexican border, according to a Congressional Research Service report.) But immigration experts have said the U.S. economy was the number one reason illegal immigration has slowed.
We need to be ready to build other kinds of fences, too. The point is that properly built walls work. We just need the political will to finish the job. And by the way, finishing the job will employ a lot of construction workers. Moreover, I call on Congress and the president to hire another 25,000 border patrol agents and give them the aerial equipment they need, such as Predator drones, to provide real-time aerial reconnaissance information to agents guarding the border wall.
The El Paso region's role in the drug trade is mostly limited to warehouse and distribution to other larger, more profitable American markets. This is similar to El Paso's role in the maquilla sector, where goods are manufactured in Juarez then shipped to El Paso for distribution to U.S. markets. The relatively low value of the retail drug trade in El Paso might be one reason that the murder rate here is so low compared to other, more lucrative destination markets. The average murder rate for [U.S. destination] cities was 16 murders per 100,000 in 2010; in El Paso it was 0.8 per 100,000.
Inside the White House, Obama and his aides conceded that they expected a long battle, predicting that the fate of SB1070 might eventually rest with the Supreme Court. What at first had seemed like a hard-earned immigration victory for Obama began to look more like a defeat as summer turned to fall. The president tried to appease both conservatives and liberals with immigration policies that instead satisfied nobody. He sent unmanned aircraft drones to monitor the border and deported record numbers of illegal immigrants. Such attempts to secure the border further enraged Hispanic voters who already felt like Obama had failed them.
A: The key is to consult with local communities, whether it’s on the commercial interests or the environmental stakes of creating any kind of barrier. The Bush administration is not real good at listening. I will reverse that policy. There may be areas where it makes sense to have some fencing. Having border patrolled, surveillance, deploying effective technology, that’s going to be the better approach.
A: Both Obama and I voted for that as part of the immigration debate. There is a smart way to protect our borders, and there is a dumb way to protect our borders. What I learned is that the University of Texas at Brownsville would have part of its campus cut off. This is the kind of absurdity that we’re getting from this administration. I’ve been fighting with them about the northern border. Their imposition of passports and other kinds of burdens are separating people from families, interfering with business and commerce, the movement of goods and people. So what I’ve said is that I would say, wait a minute, we need to review this. There may be places where a physical barrier is appropriate. When both of us voted for this, we were voting for the possibility that where it was appropriate and made sense, it would be considered.
A: There’s a lot we’ve learned about technology and smart fencing. There is technology that can be used instead of a physical barrier. It requires us having enough personnel along the border so that people can be supervising a certain limited amount of space and can be responsive in the event of people attempting to cross illegally. The way that the Bush administration is going about this, filing eminent domain actions against landowners and municipalities, makes no sense. After a careful review, listening to the people who live along the border, there may be limited places where it would work. But let’s deploy more technology and personnel, instead of the physical barrier. That will work better and will give us an opportunity to secure our borders without interfering with family relations, business relations, recreation and so much else that makes living along the border wonderful.
A: I do favor much more border patrolling and much more technology on both of our borders, and in certain areas, even a physical barrier, because I think we’ve got to secure our borders. That has to be part of comprehensive immigration reform. I have championed comprehensive immigration reform, and it includes starting with securing our borders in order to give people the support they need to come over and support us when it comes to having a pathway to legalization. We all know that this has become a contentious political issue. We want to work in a bipartisan way to have comprehensive reform--employer verification, more help for local communities so that they can pay for schooling and hospital and other expenses that they have to bear because of the immigration crisis.
OBAMA: I have been a consistent champion of comprehensive immigration reform. And keep in mind that my father came to this country from a small village in Africa because he was looking for opportunity. And so when I see people who are coming across these borders, whether legally or illegally, I know that the motivation is trying to create a better life for their children and their grandchildren. So I was one of the leaders, along with several other senators, in passing comprehensive immigration reform. It failed in the House. That is going to involve some elements of border security because we’ve got to make our borders more secure. We can’t just have hundreds of thousands of people coming into the country without knowing who they are.
KLOBUCHAR: I believe we need to have order. We need to have adequate border controls, the fence, and no amnesty for companies hiring illegal immigrants; as well as earned citizenship for people who have been here, have paid their taxes, that are willing to learn English and become part of our community.
KENNEDY: Ms. Klobuchar came out first for a bill that had nothing in there for a fence. I [didn’t agree with that bill] that we should give a veto right to Mexico to control our border.
KLOBUCHAR: For 6 years, this Congressman and this Congress had the ability to do something about immigration. We need comprehensive immigration reform. It hasn’t happened. The Fargo Forum debunked his claims on my stands on immigration, and said they were distorted and not true.
FITZGERALD: I do not support a fence on our southern border. You show me a 50-foot fence, I’ll show you someone with a 51-foot ladder.
CORKER: I visited the border and I’ve seen holes in the border fence. People of all nationalities are coming through that border. We need to ensure that we use technology, and use those things necessary so we know who’s coming & going. We need to make sure that we allow people to work here, but only if they’re legal. We need instant employer certification so employers know if people they’re hiring are legal, & punish employers who don’t