Taxpayers Should Not Help Illegal Immigrants Avoid Deportation

The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman, as first reported by Fox News journalist Bill Melugin, is using taxpayer money on billboards on the southern border that offer free legal services to illegal immigrants facing deportation.

“Your brother in immigration custody has rights, we are here to help,” reads one billboard. Above and below “brother” are other possible relatives who may also need legal help, including “uncle”, “neighbor”, “father”, “friend”, “mother” and a gender-inclusive “partner”.

“Time and time again, we have seen DHS put the open borders agenda ahead of its mission to protect American families,” Rep. Tony Gonzalez (R-Texas) said in a statement. “Whether it’s FEMA spending hundreds of millions of dollars on migrant housing or OIDO running ads like this, our government is spending money on the wrong priorities. It’s time for Congress to stop programs like this.”

OIDO was created by Democratic members of Congress in 2019 to make it more difficult for both Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol to deport undocumented immigrants. In addition to paying lawyers to fight the deportation of individuals, OIDO staff organize sympathetic media coverage of undocumented immigrants and urge sheriffs in border communities not to cooperate with ICE. They are a radical leftist, taxpayer-funded, government-run, open borders non-profit organization with the sole purpose of thwarting DHS’ border security mission.

Former President Donald Trump promised that if re-elected, he would immediately dismantle the agency.

“Kamala is now putting up billboards near the border advertising FREE legal services for criminal aliens,” Trump wrote on X. “When I win, the billboards will fall and the migrant gangs will go home!”

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Harris has not made any statements about OIDO or responded to questions about it. The situation must change before Election Day. As California’s attorney general, she advised local sheriffs not to cooperate with ICE, just as OIDA does to sheriffs. Harris should be pressed to say whether she believes sheriffs in border communities and across the country should be encouraged to cooperate with ICE. More importantly, she should be forced to say whether she will use the Department of Justice and DHS to force local law enforcement to cooperate with federal law enforcement to complete all the deportations she says she intends to carry out.

In 2019, the Democratic Party continued to take a radical turn to the left. That’s when Harris pledged to use taxpayer money to provide free surgeries for transgender criminals and decriminalize border crossings. In theory, she moved away from both of these positions. However, if she wants to convince undecided voters that she has truly changed and is no longer subservient to radical open border advocates, then she should step up, join Trump, and call for an end to OID.