President-Elect Joe Biden said he will ensure there is a “thorough investigation” by the Justice Department into officials of President Donald Trump’s administration who crafted and carried out the “Zero Tolerance” policy at the United States-Mexico border to deter illegal immigration.
During a press conference on January 8, Biden committed to having the Justice Department open an investigation into Trump officials who carried out the Zero Tolerance policy through which adult border crossers entered separate custody from the children they arrived at the southern border with.
The practice, as Breitbart News noted, has been employed since before 2001, though the Trump administration ended the effort in June 2018.
“I’ll commit that our Justice Department, our investigative arms, will make judgments about who is responsible … and whether or not the conduct is criminal across the board,” Biden said. “But as I said yesterday, I am not going to tell the Justice Department who they should prosecute and who they should not.”
“There will be a thorough, thorough investigation of who is responsible and whether or not their responsibility is criminal, and if that is the [conclusion], the Attorney General will make that judgment,” Biden continued.
The Obama administration, for which Biden served as vice president, often used fencing barriers in Department of Homeland Security (DHS) facilities to house child migrants.
Likewise, Biden hinted at his push to quickly pass an amnesty for the majority of 11 to 22 million illegal aliens living in the U.S. and revoke a number of executive orders issued by Trump to reform the nation’s legal immigration system that admits 1.2 million green card holders every year.
“I will introduce an immigration bill immediately and have it sent to the appropriate committees to begin movement,” Biden said. “I will in fact countermand executive orders that the president has in fact initiated that are contrary to what I think is either his authority and/or even if it’s his authority, contrary to the interests of the United States on environmental issues and a range of other things.”
Critics have said Biden is looking to restart a “Hunger Games” migration policy at the southern border in which border crossers are encouraged to carry out a dangerous, and sometimes deadly, journey through Central America and Mexico in order to make their way to the U.S. and be freed into the interior of the country while awaiting their asylum and immigration hearings.
Biden and his advisers have said they plan to tear down the legal wall that Trump has erected to close loopholes and eliminate fraud for the purpose of reducing illegal immigration.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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