Elizabeth Warren: Crossing the Border Illegally Shouldn't Be Illegal
2020 hopeful bring up Section 1325 of the immigration code in interview
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said she doesn't believe that illegally crossing the border should not be a criminal offense, according to an interview with the California Nation podcast.
The 2020 hopeful brought up various issues during her interview, including Section 1325 of the immigration code, which makes it an offense for people to cross the border illegally.
“Are you in favor of repealing that?” Warren was asked.
“I am,” Warren said, adding that “criminalizing” illegal entry does not make people safer.
“I think that the whole notion of criminalizing the approach to coming across the border without documentation is not making anybody any safer. We just need to be in a different position on this,” she said.
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“It’s really important on immigration that we concentrate our resources on the people who pose threats to us, and that’s not children,” she continued.
“It’s not mamas fleeing terror from gangs down in Central America. It’s not people trying to build a life who have family here,” she added:
According to recent U.S. Customs and Border Protection data, two caravans that arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border included “1,520 previously deported illegal aliens who had been convicted of crimes in the U.S."
Of those:
- Four were convicted of murder
- Nearly 30 were convicted of sex crimes
- More than 60 had been sentenced for assault or aggravated assault with a deadly weapon
- Two were convicted of violence against law enforcement officials
- That data only reflects the illegal aliens from those two caravans alone.
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But the Democrats endlessly skirt around countless stories of illegal alien crime.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also echoed the views of Warren saying that illegal immigration should not be a crime.
“You cannot say anybody coming across the border is breaking the law,” Pelosi said.
“Not until there is a determination whether they can stay or not.”
The House Speaker shared the views of individual presidential candidates like Julián Castro, who called for the repeal of the specific statute.
“The reason that they're separating these little children from their families is that they're using Section 1325 of that act which criminalizes coming across the border to incarcerate the parents and then separate them,” Castro said on the debate stage.
“Some of us on this stage have called to end that section, to terminate it. And I want to challenge all of the candidates to do that.”
