Bipartisan alternative to Obama's border crisis plan takes shape

Republicans have said that President Obama's $3.7 billion border crisis plan doesn't address a key 2008 law that slows deportations. A bill to change the law is in the works, but Democrats are wary.

|
Susan Walsh/AP
Sen. John Cornyn (R) of Texas (c.), seen here at a Capitol Hill news conference in Washington Tuesday, is working to change a 2008 law that established more stringent deportation protocols for immigrant children from Central America than for those from Mexico.

A bipartisan alternative to President Obama’s emergency request for $3.7 billion to deal with the child-migrant crisis on the border is simmering in Congress. The emerging legislation focuses on what many lawmakers say is a root cause of the surge: a 2008 child trafficking law that spells out how to handle the cases of unaccompanied minors.

Working in the legislation’s favor is that it’s being hatched by a Republican and Democrat in the state where the problem is most acute: Texas. Also in its favor: Nancy Pelosi, the majority leader for Democrats in the House, says the idea behind the effort is “not a deal-breaker” to passing the president’s request for emergency funding – even though she and other Democrats strongly oppose changing the law.

The Department of Homeland Security estimates that as many as 90,000 unaccompanied minors will have been apprehended at the border by the end of September. Ground zero for the surge is the Rio Grande Valley. That gives special impetus to Texas' Sen. John Cornyn (R) and Rep. Henry Cuellar (D), whose district borders the river, to work on a bill that could pass both chambers.

The heart of the legislation, which Senator Cornyn says is still in its early stages, concerns a change to the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008. The act was meant to provide special treatment for child victims at a time when such migrants arrived in far lower numbers than now.

“We’re trying to identify what are the parts of the 2008 law that we should leave undisturbed, and what parts need to be changed in order to deal with the cause of the current crisis,” Cornyn told the Monitor. “So we’re narrowing that down and looking for what additional resources need to be sent to the border to deal with the surge, in terms of border patrol, health and human services, and the like.”

At issue is the way the 2008 law treats unaccompanied minors from countries that do not border the United States

When minors come from Canada or Mexico, border patrol agents are allowed to determine whether they can stay in the US. The whole process, including deportation, goes quickly because those children can be handed over directly and safely to officials from their home countries.

But most of the children in this influx, which began in 2012, come from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. Because they come from farther away and have to be flown back to a situation that is harder to read from a distance, the law takes greater care with them.

They must be turned over to the Department of Health and Human Services within 72 hours of being apprehended, so that the agency can find them a safe place to stay and legal counsel to advise them on whether they qualify for asylum.

Because of the backlog in immigration courts, they can sometimes wait a year or two for their case to be heard, and many never show up. Without deportations, people in Central America get a message that minors can stay in the US.

The White House wants to address this issue by asking Congress to give the secretary of Homeland Security the same “discretion” to handle cases from the three Central American countries that it already has with minors from Canada or Mexico, said Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Thursday. That discretion would give the border patrol the ability to offer children a voluntary return – which many children accept, Secretary Johnson said.

But the White House did not include this proposal in its request for emergency funds – and it’s not clear when it might make the request. That is likely because some Democrats and immigrant advocate groups are not persuaded by administration assurances that it will uphold the “spirit” of the 2008 law.

Those groups are adamant against actually changing the law. They are concerned that children will lose their right to due process and will be coerced by law enforcement and returned to dangerous situations.

“I will fight tooth and nail changes in the Trafficking Victims Protection Act,” Sen. Patrick Leahy, (D) of Vermont, said at Thursday’s hearing.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) of California, whose work had a large influence on the 2008 act, hopes that Johnson can use an “exception” clause in the law to find the flexibility he needs, rather than have Congress amend the law.

Cornyn says the outlines of his bipartisan legislation will become more clear next week. He says he can “assure” those who worry about children’s rights that they will be upheld.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Bipartisan alternative to Obama's border crisis plan takes shape
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/DC-Decoder/2014/0710/Bipartisan-alternative-to-Obama-s-border-crisis-plan-takes-shape
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe