A trio of Democrats running for top offices in Texas want to decriminalize unauthorized border crossings.
U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, who’s challenging Republican Sen. Ted Cruz for his Senate seat, gubernatorial candidate Lupe Valdez, and congressional candidate Veronica Escobar told HuffPost they are in favor of such a move, which the report says would be simpler to implement than abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as some Democrats have demanded.
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Decriminalizing unauthorized border crossings would go against the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy that led to family separations at the border. The Department of Homeland Security would still be able to charge unauthorized immigrants with civil violations, the report notes, but it would save the federal government billions in incarceration costs.
“The United States has built a system on incarcerating migrants,” Escobar told the publication. “We really have to evaluate the way that we’ve criminalized migration.”
Valdez, a former Customs agent, said the majority of migrants “are not coming in to do harm.”
“We still have to have some kind of checking and verifying, but I don’t think coming in here undocumented should be a criminal issue,” she said.
O’Rourke said the U.S. “should not criminalize” immigrants requesting asylum in between ports of entry.
Under current immigration laws, illegally crossing the border the first time is a misdemeanor and carries a prison sentence of up to six months. Further offenses are punishable by sentences of up to 20 years, depending on an immigrant’s criminal record.
