Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., appeared on Stuart Varney’s program Varney and Co. on the Fox Business Network last week to discuss the Obama administration’s approach to border enforcement.
Varney asked Gowdy why the Obama administration won’t enforce federal immigration law. The South Carolina representative pointed to the SAFE Act, legislation he introduced the previous Congress, which in part would have allowed states to pass their own immigration laws and apprehend illegal immigrants for “enforcement purposes.”
“Why this administration decided to make detainers permissive instead of mandatory is something that ultimately you’re gonna have to ask the administration,” Gowdy said. “We asked it repeatedly yesterday, and we got no good answer other than this mistaken, nostalgic belief that if you ask people to cooperate, eventually they will. What they didn’t answer is how many innocent people have to die before that happens.”
Varney then played a clip from a hearing on Capitol Hill last week when Rep. Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, asked Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson if he knew whether or not President Obama reached out to the parents of Kate Steinle, who was killed earlier this month allegedly by an illegal immigrant who had been deported from the United States five times and committed multiple crimes. Johnson did not appear to know who Steinle was, or if the president had reached out.
When Varney turned back to Gowdy, the congressman noted he was also in the room at the hearing. “We have a president who loves to call entertainers and loves to call athletes,” he said. “And I’m sure that makes the news and that’s fun to talk to famous people.”
But when you have an innocent young woman who is doing nothing more than walking with her father in an American city, and [she is] killed by someone who has been deported five times and done state, local and federal time and is unlawfully in possession of a firearm, I think the least you can do is at least express your condolences simply father to father.
He’s a father, too. Just father to father: ‘I am so sorry this happened to your daughter.’ And it would be great if he pledged to do something about it. But look at what San Francisco said even after she was killed. They don’t see the need to change their policy, so sometimes you have to help people see the need to do something either by forcing them through the supremacy clause to do it or cutting their money.
h/t: IJ Review
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This post originally appeared on Western Journalism - Equipping You With The Truth