Every single Democrat in the Senate voted against an amendment from Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) that would have prevented federal funds from being used by the Biden administration to fly illegal immigrants into the interior of the United States.
The vote came after Todd Bensman at the Center for Immigration Studies reported that a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit led to the disclosure that 320,000 “inadmissible aliens” flew into the U.S. in 2023, taking advantage of U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s One app. While it was not clear where the migrants were flown, the report said they arrived at 43 different airports across the United States.
“I’m bringing forward a vote on a very simple question. Do you support American taxpayer dollars being used to fly illegal immigrants from countries like Venezuela and Haiti into America to be settled in cities and towns near you? If so, vote against me,” Hagerty said while discussing his amendment to spending legislation which would have prevented federal funds from being used for these flights. “Make no mistake here, President Biden has been secretly flying hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants into blue city airports.”
Tonight every single Senate Democrat voted against my amendment that would stop Biden Admin from using taxpayer dollars to charter flights for hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens from their countries directly to American towns to be resettled.
Indefensible. pic.twitter.com/ofTnhSPnY8
— Senator Bill Hagerty (@SenatorHagerty) March 23, 2024
All Democrats as well as the three independents who caucus with them voted against Hagerty’s amendment, with the final vote total being 47 to 51.
Hagerty previously authored an amendment that would have prevented illegal immigrants from being counted in the Census for apportioning seats in the House of Representatives, thereby inflating the political power of districts with large numbers of illegal immigrants. All Senate Democrats voted against this amendment from Hagerty as well.
“I think that this proves the motive behind the crime on our border,” Hagerty said, adding, “They want these illegal migrants in here to create more electoral power for them in their blue states. They’re basically creating sanctuary cities to be a magnet so these people will disproportionately flow to these blue states.”
“The estimates are as high as 10 million people that have come here. That would be 13 extra congressional districts if you allocated them the right way,” the Republican senator from Tennessee explained. “This is a tremendous amount of power that the Democrats are bringing in.”
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Democrat opposition to both of Hagerty’s amendments comes as the United States has faced an unprecedented crisis on our southern border, with officials recording about 9 million nationwide encounters and 1.7 million estimated gotaways since President Joe Biden took office. The figure poses a sharp contrast with the 415,000 total reported gotaways for 2018, 2019, and 2020 under the Trump administration.
While millions of illegal immigrants have entered the United States, the Biden administration failed to file court papers in connection to illegal immigration cases, resulting in 200,000 deportation cases being dismissed.
A February poll from Pew Research found 80% of Americans said the government was doing a poor job handling the influx of migrants at the border while a more recent Harvard CAPS-Harris poll found that 36% of voters believe that immigration was the biggest issue facing the country.
