Tuesday at a press conference, Sheriff Paul Babeu of Pinal County, AZ said the Obama administration was achieving a “de facto amnesty” by not hiring new border agents, not assigning agents to high traffic areas, allowing captured illegal immigrants to be released with only a notice to appear, and having administration officials dismiss the concerns of the border agents who disagree with the policy.

Babeu said, “Traffic for illegals is up in the first four months of this fiscal year by 25 percent. You see a 102 percent increase of unaccompanied juveniles. A 102 percent increase in the first four months in this fiscal year, and we are up 170 percent of families that are together, and so at a time when we see a rapid rise in the actual numbers crossing this border, and you can make any justification of why that’s happening, what we see from this administration, from the Obama administration is an actual reduction at a time we should be providing more support to secure our border. And we have seen 1500 border patrol agents that are mandated by Congress that are not being hired and we see a submission of another 300 border patrol agents that are being cut. That is approaching almost 10% of our border patrol that is not being added, that is not on our border protecting guarding and defending America.”

He continued, “This administration literally has handcuffed them from doing their job. They have a leader in Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske who says that if they don’t agree, if our heroes in the border patrol don’t agree with the Obama administration and this lawlessness that is happening, that they can go find another job.”

The sheriff said, “This is what is happening—that we are deliberately and intentionally, the leaders, those who are in charge of our border patrol haven’t been assigning to areas we know are high traffic areas.”

He added, “What’s happening now when an illegal is apprehend they are supposed to be given a promise to appear, a notice to appear and that’s not even happening. It could be 30, 60, 90 days at some point out, we already know, it’s proven that a majority of these individuals will never show up for their court hearing, so this is a complete sham. So the fact that the president is saying, well this is our process, basically it’s de facto amnesty because there is no consequence, no enforcement of the law and there is no tracking of where that person is.”

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