Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe claimed it’s “obvious” that the wave illegal immigrant children flooding federal shelters and detention centers are coming “at the invitation of the president.”
Inhofe spoke Thursday morning with MSNBC’s Chuck Todd about the growing crisis, touching particularly on the temporary housing of thousands of illegal children at a federal Army base at Fort Sill, Okla.
“If Oklahoma doesn’t want them, what do you do with these kids — since Congress is still trying to figure out how to give the tools to the DHS to try to speed up the deportation process?” Todd asked. “Where should they be housed if not here?”
“Well, first of all, I think we’re overlooking the obvious here,” Inhofe replied. “I went down and talked to these kids. At that time they just arrived, there might have been 300 or 400 of them.”
“These kids were here in this country at the invitation of the president,” the senator charged. “I think everybody knows it. Nobody says it.”
“What does that mean?” Todd asked testily.
“That means that during his DACA, the Deferred Action Childhood Arrivals, he’s making it sound as if, ‘Come here, we’ll take care of you,'” Inhofe explained, referring to the White House’s 2012 workaround of Congress after the failure of the DREAM Act. “And they all believe this, Chuck! I know you don’t believe them, but they do!”
Inhofe urged President Obama to reverse his DACA decision or risk an unending flood of young illegal immigrants — putting both the children and the United States at risk.
“I really believe that the president has to make this decision,” he said. “He can deport some of them.”
“It’s one thing to deal with the ones that are here now,” Inhofe concluded. “The other is to stop the flow that is coming in at the invitation of the president.”