On Friday's edition of The O'Reilly Factor, substitute host Monica Crowley investigated the Obama administration's declaration that it would institute a case-by-case review of deportations to thin the list out to just remove violent illegal aliens from the country.
Crowley invited on Steven Camerota of the Center for Immigration Studies as a critic, and immigration lawyer Susan Church to argue for Obama. Church couldn't even agree that someone sneaking into the country was "illegal." She insisted that was a "misnomer of Fox News." It's simply a "civil violation." So we should call them "civil violation aliens"?
CROWLEY: Susan, we're either a nation of laws or we're not. So why is this administration, then, rewarding the illegal act of entering the country in violation of our laws?
SUSAN CHURCH, IMMIGRATION ATTORNEY: Well, first of all, it's funny that you say the term 2 million, because there's only 300,000 immigrants currently in deportation proceedings, and believe it or not, sometimes it's actually difficult to get into deportation proceedings. So this only applies to an extremely small number of immigrants. Within that subset of 300,000, no one with any criminal history whatsoever will be included. The categories are even more narrow for people -
CROWLEY: But Susan -
CHURCH: If I could finish, the categories are even -
CROWLEY: If they entered the country illegally, doesn't that make them a criminal?
CHURCH: No, that's a misnomer of Fox News, it's a civil violation.
Camerota denounced the Obama administration for "basically lawmaking by judicial fiat. This didn't go through congress. This wasn't passed into law but in effect, it goes around the law and he's using his authority as president to essentially make law and it's a kind of lawlessness and it's an administrative amnesty, plain and simple." Crowley also asked:
CROWLEY: Steven, let me ask you, the president, as I mentioned to Susan, the president has said for a long time, he lacked the authority to do this. And then he looked at those polls numbers and I guess he found the authority under a seat cushion or something this week.
CAMAROTA: Well, right. You'd like to introduce the current president to the one back in May who explicitly said "look, our system doesn't work this way. I can't take whole big categories of people, you know, and just say we're not going to arrest them." But that's exactly what the memo said in June. And now this, possibly we're talking millions of people are covered by the prior announcement and now this one who are just simply not going to be arrested.
