Tonight, the House passed two immigration measures, both of which I supported. One was H.R. 5272, which defunds President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. DACA is an executive action, not approved by Congress, that has weakened our nation’s deportation and removal responses. Today’s bill prevents the federal government from issuing new guidance, memorandums, regulations, or policies related to the expansion of any deferred action programs. In other words, it stops the program the President has used to defer removal proceedings for unaccompanied minors and others entering the country illegally, and prevents a similar, new program being implemented. I voted in support of a similar amendment to the Homeland Security Appropriations bill last year, and supported it again today. The other bill we voted on today was H.R. 5230. This bill amends the 2008 law that is preventing some unaccompanied minors from being deported, and ensures they are quickly processed through the legally required judicial process. Despite the President’s request for $3.7 billion to deal with the current border crisis, the House only made available $694 million—and all of it was offset, mostly through reclaiming unspent money from FEMA. This spending is primarily for border security measures, and measures to more quickly process unaccompanied minors coming into our country illegally. Specifically, the House proposal will require that an unaccompanied minor begin the required legal process within 7-days; this will greatly expedite the proceeding for those minors who will subsequently be deported. Some of the money is also used to deploy National Guard troops to our southern border. I voted for this package because doing nothing is not a viable option. In the absence of Congressional action, the President will likely issue more executive orders when money to deal with the problem is exhausted in a few weeks. That will ultimately lead to more children crossing the border, a bigger backlog of cases that bogs down our system, and a crisis that only grows. The only other legislative proposal exists in the Senate, and that would spend $2.7 billion without offsets, give the President more money and more discretion on how to spend it, and not make border security a priority. That is unacceptable. Given the options we had, the House bills to fund border security and to prevent more executive action by the President were clearly the best path forward.
Posted on: Sat, 02 Aug 2014 01:57:09 +0000
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