Obama pursuing executive actions on immigration, after House effort stalls

[bsteadman]

Obama pursuing executive actions on immigration, after House effort stalls

Fox News
7/1/2014

Excerpt:

President Barack Obama speaks while meeting with Chile's President Michelle Bachelet Monday, June 30, 2014, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington.AP

President Obama vowed Monday to bypass Congress and pursue unilateral changes to the country's immigration system, defying House Republicans who say his executive actions are part of the problem.

The president, speaking in the Rose Garden, said he is forced to go it alone because the House has failed to act on a comprehensive overhaul. He said Speaker John Boehner informed him last week the House will not vote on an immigration bill this year.

"America cannot wait forever for them to act," Obama said. He said he's launching a new effort to "fix as much of our immigration system as I can, on my own, without Congress."

The president's announcement is sure to infuriate congressional Republicans. Obama is pushing for new executive actions in defiance of Boehner's vow last week to pursue a lawsuit against the president over alleged executive overreach. Even before Monday's announcement, Boehner and his colleagues alleged that the president has gone too far in making changes without Congress to immigration policy, the Affordable Care Act, environmental regulations and other issues.

This new push would go further still.

In a written statement, Boehner called Obama's announcement "sad and disappointing," and said executive orders "can't and won't fix these problems."

During his remarks in the Rose Garden, Obama cited the current surge of illegal immigrant children crossing the southern border and said the "crisis" should underscore the need to pass a comprehensive bill. But Boehner claimed that it was Obama's past executive orders -- those easing deportations for some illegal immigrants -- that "have led directly to the humanitarian crisis along the southern border."

Boehner said "additional executive action from this president isn't going to stem the tide of illegal crossings, it's only going to make them worse." He also referred to last week's Supreme Court ruling that Obama overstepped in making recess appointments, saying the court "reminded us" that there are "sharp limits" to presidential power.

As for his conversation last week with the president, Boehner said he only told Obama what he's been saying for months: that until the public and elected officials trust him to enforce the law, "it is going to be difficult to make progress on this issue."

Obama, though, said he would still prefer to seek changes via Congress, and he'd continue to press the House to act.

But for the time being, the president announced two steps. First, he's directed Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and Attorney General Eric Holder to move "available resources" from the interior to the border to address security. Further, the president said he's directed a team to "identify additional actions my administration can take on our own within my existing legal authorities to do what Congress refuses to do and fix as much of our immigration system as we can."
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[bsteadman]

Medical staff warned: Keep your mouths shut about illegal immigrants or face arrest

Fox News
Todd Starnes
7/1/2014

Excerpt:

A government-contracted security force threatened to arrest doctors and nurses if they divulged any information about the contagion threat at a refugee camp housing illegal alien children at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, sources say.

In spite of the threat, several former camp workers broke their confidentiality agreements and shared exclusive details with me about the dangerous conditions at the camp. They said taxpayers deserve to know about the contagious diseases and the risks the children pose to Americans. I have agreed to not to disclose their identities because they fear retaliation and prosecution.

“There were several of us who wanted to talk about the camps, but the agents made it clear we would be arrested,” a psychiatric counselor told me. “We were under orders not to say anything.”

The sources said workers were guarded by a security force from the Baptist Family & Children’s Services, which the Department of Health and Human Services hired to run the Lackland Camp.

The sources say security forces called themselves the “Brown Shirts.”

“It was a very submissive atmosphere,” the counselor said. “Once you stepped onto the grounds, you abided by their laws – the Brown Shirt laws.”

She said the workers were stripped of their cellphones and other communication devices. Anyone caught with a phone was immediately fired.

“Everyone was paranoid,” she said. “The children had more rights than the workers.”

She said children in the camp had measles, scabies, chicken pox and strep throat as well as mental and emotional issues.

“It was not a good atmosphere in terms of health,” she said. “I would be talking to children and lice would just be climbing down their hair.”

A former nurse at the camp told me she was horrified by what she saw.

“We have so many kids coming in that there was no way to control all of the sickness – all this stuff coming into the country,” she said. “We were very concerned at one point about strep going around the base.”

Both the counselor and the nurse said their superiors tried to cover up the extent of the illnesses.
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