page_title: Jeff Sessions
section_title: Immigration
hierarchical_section_title: Jeff Sessions / Political positions / Immigration
caption_attribution_description: English: Jeff Sessions speaking at an event in Washington, DC.
context_page_description: Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III is an American politician and lawyer who served as the 84th United States attorney general from 2017 to 2018. A Republican, Sessions previously served as United States senator from Alabama from 1997 to 2017 before resigning that position to serve in the administration of President Donald Trump.
  From 1981 to 1993, Sessions served as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Alabama. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan nominated Sessions to a judgeship on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama. After allegations of racism were made against him in testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, which Sessions denied, the committee voted against advancing his nomination to the Senate floor; the nomination was later withdrawn. Sessions was elected Attorney General of Alabama in 1994. In 1996, he was elected to the U.S. Senate, and was re-elected in 2002, 2008, and 2014. During his Senate tenure, Sessions was considered one of the most conservative Senators.
context_section_description: Sessions was an opponent of legal and illegal immigration during his time in Congress. He opposed the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007 and the bi-partisan Gang of Eight's Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013. He said that a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants undermines the rule of law, that the inflow of guest workers and immigrants depresses wages and raises unemployment for United States citizens, and that current immigration policy expands an underclass dependent on the welfare state. In a May 2006 floor speech, he said, "Fundamentally, almost no one coming from the Dominican Republic to the United States is coming because they have a skill that would benefit us and that would indicate their likely success in our society." He is a supporter of E-Verify, the federal database that allows businesses to electronically verify the immigration status of potential new hires, and has advocated for expanded construction of a Southern border fence. In 2013, Sessions said that an opt-out provision in immigration legislation before Congress would allow Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano to avoid building a border fence. PolitiFact called Session's statement "False", stating that the provision would allow Napolitano to determine where the fence was built, but not opt out of building it entirely.
  Sessions' Senate website expressed his view that there is a "clear nexus between immigration and terrorism" and that "Plainly, there is no way to vet these refugees" who would immigrate to the U.S. from Syria in 2016 or who came to the U.S. after September 11, 2001 and were alleged to be involved in terrorism. The news release said that "the absence of derogatory information in our systems about an individual does not mean that admitting that individual carries no risk". Sessions has expressed the view that the children of immigrants from Muslim-majority countries are "susceptible to the toxic radicalization of terrorist organizations" on the basis of the Orlando and San Bernardino Attacks. Sessions supported establishing safe zones as an alternative to immigration from war-torn countries.
  Breitbart News executive chairman Steve Bannon talked about Jeff Sessions as the leader of the movement for slowing down both legal and illegal immigration before Donald Trump came to the scene, considering his work to kill immigration reform as akin "to the civil rights movement of 1960". Sessions and his communications director Stephen Miller developed what Miller describes as "nation-state populism" as a response to globalization and immigration.
  Immigration is the issue that brought Sessions and Trump together. Trump has credited Sessions as an influential advisor on immigration. After Trump was elected and announced Sessions as his Attorney General nominee, Cato Institute immigration analyst Alex Nowrasteh observed "It's almost as if Sessions wrote Trump's immigration platform."
  On June 18, 2018, a group of more than 600 United Methodist Church clergy and laity announced that they were bringing church law charges against Sessions. The members of the group accused him of "child abuse, immorality, racial discrimination and dissemination of doctrines contrary to the standards of the doctrine of the United Methodist Church."
  According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a woman and her child fled domestic abuse in El Salvador to seek asylum in the U.S. However the mother was removed from her detention facility and likely put on a plane on August 9, 2018, despite Justice Department promises that she and others would not be deported before the judge could rule on their cases. Judge Emmet G. Sullivan demanded, "Turn that plane around." He threatened to hold those responsible for the removal in contempt of court, starting with Sessions, if the situation was not rectified. A Department of Homeland Security official stated, "We are complying with the court's requests ... the plaintiffs will not disembark and will be prompt
caption: U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions addressing voters in 2011
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