Fmr. DHS Official: Ending Birthright Citizenship Would ‘Paralyze’ Delivery Room Systems, ICE Apprehending Infants

EXCERPT:

FLORES: "Yes, because it gets very micro. So, you have hospital systems immediately be paralyzed at the very delivery room and be unable to provide basic medical care because you would be verifying people’s citizenship. You would have an increase in ICE enforcement in communities initially, because ICE would have to create policies to apprehend and detain more infants. And so you’d see more family separation. And every time you do that, every time you take away a child or then you apprehend their parent, you’re taking away a worker from our economy, you’re taking away demand in our economy. There is this incredible study that just came out from Brookings that where there was record high arrests that were outside of the norm of past administrations, that you had job losses for Americans. And so any increase, whether you’re deporting kids, you’re deporting their parents and you’re doing these family separations, they impact us. And that, unfortunately, is the — I mean, we’re at the 250th anniversary. Immigrants have always generated demand and economic activity. I mean, TPS holders, they contribute over about estimated $30 billion every year to the GDP. And so if you take that out, that is the fight. It is an affordability fight. I hope more leaders realize immigration is an economic cost of living issue."