Rubio: Central American Leaders Say Human Traffickers Used DACA to Recruit Children to Enter US Illegally

By Penny Starr | May 1, 2015 | 3:41 PM EDT

(CNSNews.com) – Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said that the Obama administration’s push to give legal status to some illegal aliens is at least in part responsible for the thousands of illegal alien children that have been streaming across the U.S. border with Mexico from Central America over the last couple years.

President Obama’s executive action on immigration “is not just a poison,” Rubio said, “but increasingly put us in a very precarious position, because there is strong evidence backed up by the fact that I’ve had leaders from the northern triangle in Central America – Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador – tell me that DACA was used by trafficking groups in the northern triangle to recruit people to send their children here illegally.”

At the National Review Institute’s summit on Friday in Washington, D.C., Rubio was asked about the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013, which Rubio sponsored. The Senate passed the bill, and if made law, it would give at least 11 million illegal aliens a pathway to citizenship.

Rubio was asked if there was anything in that bill that he would no longer endorse. He did not answer the question directly but said that the lack of immigration reform legislation led Obama to use his executive authority to direct the Department of Homeland Security to stop deporting illegal aliens who were brought to the U.S. as children.

“Since that Senate bill passed, we’ve had a migratory crisis on the southern border, which has further eroded public confidence in the institution of government,” Rubio said.

Rubio, who has announced he is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, said that Americans have to address the at least 11 million people who are in the country illegally. Rubio said that should include some of what was in the Senate bill but he did not mention the direct pathway to citizenship that was in the legislation.

“If you are in this country a decade or longer and have not otherwise violated our laws, you would have to come forward, undergo a criminal background check – obviously pass that. You would have to pay a fine for having broken our laws. You would have to start paying taxes. You would have to learn English,” Rubio said.

Rubio said that if illegal aliens met those requirements, they would gain a work permit but would have to spend “a significant period of time” with that status before they could seek permanent residency.

“And in exchange for all of that, what you would get is the equivalent of a non-immigrant, non-permanent work visa to be in the U.S., and you would have to be in that status for a significant period of time,” he said.

“At some point, if you choose, you could apply for permanent residency, but you’d have to do it through the modernized legal immigration system, and you’d have to do it just like everybody else - not a special process or anything of that nature,” Rubio added.

According to DHS’s Customs and Border Protection, in fiscal year 2014 (Oct. 1-Sept. 30) 28,579 unaccompanied minors crossed over the U.S. southwest border. In fiscal year 2015 to date (Oct. 1 to March 31), the number of minor crossers totaled 15,647.

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