Today, Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson will testify before the House Judiciary Committee on issues related to immigration and border security.  There is probably no department through which Obama has pushed his lawlessness more than Homeland Security, as he has completed shredded our immigration laws and erased our borders.

Republican members of the Judiciary Committee should make this hearing the beginning of a sustained effort to shame and embarrass the administration into enforcing the laws, preserving our sovereignty, and protecting our national security.  As we head into the appropriations season, they must use the power of the purse as a weapon to batter these law-breakers into submission.  If they do not receive satisfactory answers from Johnson and DHS officials, they should cut the salaries of top officials in the DHS appropriations bill.

It’s time for Republicans to unite behind one common theme – preventing a new wave of illegal immigration.  Reasonable people can disagree about what to do with those who remain here illegally after we reinstate our laws and stop the new flow of illegal immigration.  We can certainly debate the level and type of legal immigration we desire to promote in the coming years.  But any Republican who shares a modicum of Republican values should put aside those ideas and stop giving aid and comfort to the President by helping him provoke a new wave of illegal immigration.

The notion that we must debate about the future of those already here while those very debates are fostering a gushing flow of illegal migration, particularly from Central America, is absurd and dangerous.  It is analogous to a homeowner mulishly focusing on what to do with the water in his basement while ignoring the torrent of water seeping under the door.

There is an overall surge in trespassing into the southernmost tip of Texas.  The public push by the administration to grant citizenship and benefits to children of illegals has spawned a surge in juvenile border crossings.  In fact, calls for amnesty have invited in so many juvenile border crossings that DHS is setting up emergency shelters for them in Texas.  HHS estimates that about 60,000 unaccompanied minors will enter the country illegally this year, a ninefold increase from 2011.

The memo that is being telegraphed to the Third World is that America is a dumping ground; come drop off your poverty on our doorstep.  Countries have gotten so brazen with their tactics that they are refusing to repatriate their citizens after we deport them.  Yet, the administration has stopped enforcing the law requiring the State Department to withhold visas from countries that refuse to repatriate their illegal migrants.

That is why it is so irresponsible for Republicans to begin talking about the Dream Act before the enforcement measures are in place, much less at a time when Obama is suspending all law and order.  Instead of demanding true immigration reform, which starts with enforcing our laws like every other country would do, Republican leaders refer to Obama’s bad behavior as immigration “reform.”

The willful disregard of our border security and immigration laws at the hands of this administration goes far beyond the broader debate over immigration.  Republicans need to unite on this issue, and that should start today by getting some answers from Jeh Johnson.

It’s time for Republicans to embrace the issue and champion our national security instead of running from it.

Cross-posted from The Madison Project