By Adrianna McGinley
Ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), argued Tuesday that the White House is improperly operating behind lawmakers’ backs on immigration policy.
The senator specifically questioned the motive and intention of a memo released by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano in August calling to establish a working group to review the cases of hundreds of thousands of undocumented individuals.
“The Obama policies may be an impermissible intrusion on Congress’s plenary authority over immigration law,” Grassley said during an appearance before Judicial Watch, a “conservative, non-partisan educational foundation, [that] promotes transparency, accountability and integrity in government, politics and the law”.
In September, Grassley and 18 other senators sent a letter to Obama requesting the new policies be rescinded and that Napolitano be made available to questioning by Congress. She is scheduled to testify Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“It will be our chance to conduct oversight over her department and their policies,” Grassley said. “You can be sure that prosecutorial discretion will come up. I also plan again, to express my concern with how this administration is enforcing the laws, and whether they are trying to find creative ways to keep as many illegal people in this country.”
Grassley also expressed concern over a memo released last summer giving “prosecutorial discretion” to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and “gun walking” that took place under Operation Fast and Furious.
Under the controversial Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) operation, weapons were allowed to “walk” in to the hands of Mexican drug cartels. Two of these weapons were found at the scene of the December murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.
“My motivation is to make sure nothing like this ever happens again, and get the truth for the Terry family as well as an untold number of Mexican citizens who may be victims as well,” Grassley said.