we ll continue the fight. we ll continue the respectful effort to convince our colleagues in the house that we need to move forward on this issue. but it doesn t help when the president says he has a pen and he has a phone. reporter: secretary jeh johnson defending the administration today. he s been selected to conduct an overall internal review of the homeland security s deportation policies in search of ways to make them more, quote, humane. while he says the border is not open to illegal immigration, he did not confirm that the massive amounts of people, particularly children, will be deported. he did say, however, there will be action. there are a number of things that the president and i, within the confines of existing law, can do to fix the broken immigration system, and we will. if congress doesn t act, we will. reporter: on top of that, the white house press secretary said the president is evaluating executive options while the immigration reform continues at
where do you even start, iraq, obama, how do you begin to start the problems here. this was largely expected. that he would do something related to deportations, he had ordered a review of deportation policies to make it more humane. but he said immigration reform is completely dead in the house and once the results of this review come to me i m going to implement them without any further delay. the president particularly on immigration, for quite some time now he s been criticized from both the right and the left. from the right for being too lax sand from the left of having to strict of a deportation policy. so if he doesn t make executive actions dealing with deportations he may divide up the democratic base for 2016. i read in your publication,
regarding getting their green card. the president should soften his deportation policies? there s no question about it. 1,000 a week and 2 million over the course of the last six years. absolutely. congressman, quickly, what do you say to those who insist that softening enforcement is part of the reason what we re seeing now along the border in terms of this humanitarian crisis? i would say compare apples to a ape ls. the fact we have 60,000 border patrol agents along the arizona border, 6,000 intense internal security effort for detention and deportation, and have that that effort $18 billion a year done anything to satisfy the need that some people have to completely shut down the border. that is not going to happen. and i think the focus has to be where the source is.
difference? in central america? i think it will be part of managing the, this crisis. part of what you need to do is convince these families that although the desperation they face at home, this journey is just too dangerous and not worth the risk. part of that is sending this message and making sure the disinformation that s out there, that spugallers are using to try to take advantage of folks gets clarified and the mere act of sending some of these kids back, even though that s a hard thing to do from a purely humanitarian standpoint is a key piece of at least managing this flow and reducing this flow so you can deal with the ones who do get to the united states and the humanitarian way and humane way, right now resources are pretty pressed in terms of dealing with these kids the way you need to deal with them. okay. speaking of resources, we know that republicans, a lot of them are blaming the president for relaxed deportation policies. the president and his fellow democrats bl
one-year anniversary of the passage of a bipartisan senate immigration reform bill. lawmakers are trying to put pressure on house speaker john boehner who under constant political pressure from the far right has refused to take up the senate bill or even put a house version up for a vote. yesterday, illinois congressman luis gutierrez, one of the leading house democrats backing reform weaved world cup terminology into a fiery rebuke of house republicans. i gave you the warning three months ago, and now i have no other choice. you re done. hit the showers. it s the red card. the president now has no other choice but to act within existing law to ensure that our deportation policies are humane. as the obama administration faces increasing pressure over headlines like this one on the cover of the huffington post today, which reports, immigration and customs enforcement last year carried out more than 75,000 deportations of parents who said they had u.s.-born children. at a time wh