All 51 Democrats in the U.S. Senate voted against a proposal that would’ve banned the Biden administration from using any federal funds toward flying illegal immigrants to the U.S. interior.
The amendment was introduced by Republican Senator Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, but received no support from members on the other side of the political aisle.
It was brought up following a report released by Todd Bensman of the Center for Immigration Studies that revealed 320,000 “inadmissible aliens” flew into the United States last year.
That information was gathered through a lawsuit filed with the Freedom of Information Act. The illegal immigrants took advantage of the One app that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection created to make it easier for migrants to apply for asylum and entry into America.
It wasn’t clear where the immigrants were flown to, though the report did say that they were sent to 43 airports around the country.
This led to Hagerty introducing his amendment, which was added to spending bills. In discussing the amendment, Hagerty said:
“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.
“Make no mistake here, President Biden has been secretly flying hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants into blue city airports.”
Despite this plea — and the facts presented in Bensman’s report — all Democrats voted against it.
Following the vote, Hagerty took to the social media platform X to express his disgust, writing, in part, that the act by Democrats was “indefensible.”
The final vote tally was 47-51.
Hagerty has introduced multiple amendments that have to do with illegal immigrants. One would’ve prevented them from being counted in the Census, which determines how seats on the House of Representatives are apportioned.
By counting illegal immigrants, the Census inflates the political power of congressional districts where there are a large number of illegal immigrants — which often are Democratic strongholds.
Not surprisingly, every Democrat in the Senate voted against that proposal as well.
Hagerty referred to that past vote when he said:
“I think that this proves the motive behind the crime on our border. 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. This is a tremendous amount of power that the Democrats are bringing in.”
Despite this continued policy toward illegal immigrants, the overwhelming majority of Americans don’t like it.
A Pew Research poll from February revealed that 80% of all Americans believe the government is doing a poor job handling the influx of illegal immigrants at the southern border with Mexico.
