House Republicans passed the Deporting Fraudsters Act on Wednesday, and nearly every Democrat in the chamber voted against it.
186 of them. Out of 216.
Let that sink in.
The bill amends the Immigration and Nationality Act to make welfare fraud an explicit deportable offense. It’s such a painfully simple and noncontroversial idea that noncitizens who steal should be deported.
"If you admit to or you're convicted of fraudulently receiving public benefits, you are out of here on the next plane and can never return,” Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) said on the House floor.
You can’t argue with that logic… unless, apparently, you're a House Democrat.
"It's a no-brainer,” Rep. David Taylor (R-Ohio) said. “If an illegal alien defrauds the United States or steals benefits from our nation's most vulnerable, they should be permanently removed from our country."
Democratic lawmakers largely opposed the GOP-authored bill, arguing that noncitizens convicted of fraud are already eligible for deportation.
"Another week, another redundant and completely unnecessary immigration crime bill," Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said during debate on the measure.
Democrats also sharply criticized the measure for eroding legal immigrants’ due process rights by permitting noncitizens to be deported prior to prosecutors securing a conviction.
"By bypassing the conviction requirement, this legislation would hand a liberal get-out-of-jail free card to immigrants who commit fraud by deporting them without going through the criminal justice system and giving their victims a day in court," Raskin said.
GOP lawmakers countered that there is no language in the bill that prevents noncitizens from being prosecuted for alleged fraud prior to removal from the country.
Republicans have spent months shining a spotlight on one of the most jaw-dropping fraud scandals in American history in Minnesota, where Gov. Tim Walz has been accused of letting it happen for years.
At least $9 billion in taxpayer money is estimated to have been stolen through fraudulent welfare schemes across 14 state programs on Tim Walz’s watch. Nearly 100 individuals have been charged, the majority Somali immigrants, involving fake daycare centers, phantom meal programs, fabricated health clinics — all billing the government for services that never existed, all while real children and vulnerable people went without.
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The scandal exploded into the national conversation thanks in large part to independent journalist Nick Shirley, who reportedly uncovered $110 million in questionable payments to Somali-run businesses on his very first day of digging. House Republicans made sure his work didn't go unnoticed.
It’s bad enough that so many Democrats voted against it, but just because it passed doesn’t mean it will go anywhere. The bill will die in the Senate because Senate Democrats will “filibuster” it because Democrats obstruct, obstruct, obstruct.
I guess we can at least say that Republicans made Democrats own their position: 186 of them stood up on the House floor and said no to deporting people who steal from American taxpayers. Let’s make sure the public never forgets that.
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