Congressional Republicans Ramp Up Attack on Obama Immigration Record

Wall Street Journal

By Laura Meckler

June 24, 2014

Congressional Republicans Ramp Up Attack on Obama Immigration Record 

Congressional Republicans ramped up attacks on President Barack Obama's immigration record Tuesday, accusing him of complicity in the surge of young people traveling alone crossing the U.S. border illegally.

House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) appointed a GOP working group of members of Congress to examine the crisis and repeated his call for Mr. Obama to deploy the National Guard to the U.S. border with Mexico. "The president has allowed a national security and humanitarian crisis to develop on the U.S. southern border," Mr. Boehner said.

Similar attacks were leveled at a hearing before the House Homeland Security Committee and more are expected Wednesday when the House Judiciary Committee holds a hearing titled, "An Administration Made Disaster: The South Texas Border Surge of Unaccompanied Alien Minors."

The matter has become a political and humanitarian crisis for the Obama administration, which is scrambling to house and process a flood of children arriving at the border and to persuade Central American countries to help stem the tide. Vice President Joe Biden was in the region last week to discuss the situation with Central American leaders and to personally urge young people not to make the trip.

Republicans charge that young people are making the treacherous journey from Central America because they have been encouraged by the Obama administration's lenience for some illegal immigrants already living in the U.S. The White House first emphasized that rising gang violence in Central America was to blame for the surge, but later allowed that children are also traveling because they mistakenly think they will be allowed to stay. Officials blame unethical child smugglers for misleading people.

Administration officials are stressing that newly arriving minors won't qualify for a path to citizenship as contemplated by Congress or legal status for young people who arrived in the country years ago. Officials say that unethical smugglers are giving families misinformation about U.S. law and what kids can expect once they get here.

The administration is also emphasizing the humanitarian imperatives.

"We are talking about large numbers of children, without their parents, who have arrived at our border—hungry, thirsty, exhausted, scared and vulnerable. How we treat the children, in particular, is a reflection of our laws and our values," Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said at the House hearing Tuesday.

All these children are put into deportation proceedings. Still, U.S. law requires that unaccompanied minors who are apprehended at the border be taken into custody and then placed with someone who can care for them, typically a family in the U.S., while their deportation proceedings unfold, a process that can take years.

Administration officials also say that young people and families in Central America are misunderstanding a key legal step—the notices to appear at a hearing—for authorizations to stay in the U.S., which they aren't.

In 2013, about 25,000 children were processed through this system; this year, the government projected the total will reach 60,000, though an informal internal Homeland Security estimate puts it at 90,000. That influx has strained the government's ability to process the cases and house the children.

Appearing before the Homeland Security committee, Mr. Johnson outlined the administration's response to the crisis, including working to better move children out of the hands of Customs and Border Patrol and to the Department of Health and Human Services, which places them while deportation proceedings unfold. He said his agency is also looking for more places to hold adults with children who cross the border; urging Central American leaders to help dissuade people from making the journey; and conducting a public-relations campaign in the region with the same message.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R., Texas), chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, said the administration had encouraged these children by relaxing deportations for some in the U.S. illegally and by encouraging an overhaul of immigration law.

"It is beyond dispute that such a narrative shapes behavior and encourages people to come to our country illegally," he said. "This administration should send an unambiguous message that these children will be promptly sent home."

Across the Capitol, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.) made a similar point on the Senate floor. "America deserves leaders in the executive branch who will stand up and say clearly the crisis must end now, the border is closed, please do not come unlawfully to America and if you do come unlawfully, you will be deported."

At the House hearing, Mr. Johnson noted that children who arrive in the U.S. are allowed to stay while their cases unfold under a 2008 law signed by President George W. Bush.

"Can I take an unaccompanied child, turn them around at the border and send him back to Guatemala? I don't think the law allows us to do that," he said. "The law requires that I turn them over to HHS."

For more information, go to:  www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com