U.S. Senator Heidi Heitkamp
By: Bernard Olson
As a retired Border Patrol agent who has lived in North Dakota for more than two decades, I know full well how important the issue of immigration is to our state.
Before being reassigned to North Dakota, I worked on the southern border near Tijuana, Mexico, and in various other states throughout the country doing interior enforcement.
For nearly 20 years, I did my best to keep Americans safe from those who break our laws from my station in Bottineau, North Dakota -- located within the US Border Patrol Sector of Grand Forks.
With that being said, as someone who voted for Senator Heidi Heitkamp in 2012, I now realize that she lacks a fundamental understanding of how to handle our broken immigration system.
The years I spent working under the Obama administration were the most troublesome of my career, and throughout that time, Senator Heitkamp consistently supported the misguided approach championed by the White House.
Policies such as “catch and release,” which allowed tens of thousands of illegal aliens to roam our country freely while awaiting a hearing date, created a backlog for our immigration system that couldn’t be contained.
All the while, knowing that only a small percentage of them would even show up to court, cities and towns across the country began to adopt reckless “sanctuary city” policies that make the job of immigration enforcement officials even more difficult.
Standing by as thousands of illegal immigrants were deliberately allowed to defy federal law destroyed morale, not only among my fellow agents, but among local citizens as well.
In my experience, most of the illegal aliens arrested in North Dakota not only violated 8 USC 1325 (illegal entry into the U.S.), but also committed federal fraud under 18 USC 1546 by presenting fake documents to employers — these jobs belong to the citizens of North Dakota, not lawbreakers.
Senator Heitkamp encourages this behavior by opposing Republican efforts to crack down on sanctuary cities. In February, she voted against a bill that would have denied federal taxpayer dollars to sanctuary cities — a measure that earned the support of her fellow Democrat Senators Mike Donnelly and Joe Manchin. In 2015, she voted against the Stop Sanctuary Cities and Protect Americans Act.
Senator Heitkamp is either naive, or she is a radical liberal. The rest of her party is rushing toward an open borders agenda, and at least a dozen Democrats in Congress actually want to abolish ICE.
Believe me when I tell you: we cannot allow that to happen.
That’s why I’m grateful that President Trump has finally put us on the right track when it comes to dealing with illegal immigration. His zero tolerance approach will save American lives.
Unlike Senator Heitkamp, who thinks immigration law should only be enforced after an illegal immigrant has already committed another crime, President Trump is empowering immigration officers to do their jobs the right way by getting illegal immigrants off the streets before they have a chance to hurt anyone. He’s also hiring more immigration judges to manage the backlog of cases that people like Heitkamp created.
When I voted for Heitkamp in 2012, I did so with the hope that she might work toward reasonable compromise on a contentious issue. This became my greater hope after our state voted overwhelmingly in support of Donald Trump for President in 2016, who ran on fixing our immigration system with common-sense measures. But this November, I’ll be choosing a different candidate.
I firmly believe that Representative Kevin Cramer will help President Trump fix our broken immigration system, because he has consistently aligned himself with the President's commitment to putting American citizens first.
Cramer supports building a physical border wall, hiring additional Border Patrol agents, ending chain migration, and denying federal funds to sanctuary cities. He also knows that misguided policies like amnesty only serve to encourage more illegal immigration in the future, which is why he wants to require illegal aliens to return to their country of origin before they can be eligible to apply for U.S. citizenship.
Our country cannot move forward until the problem of illegal immigration is solved, and Senator Heitkamp has proven that she does not have the solution. Kevin Cramer does, and that’s why this retired Border Patrol agent trusts him to do what’s right for North Dakota.
Bernard Olson is a retired Deputy Patrol Agent in Charge from Bottineau, North Dakota