New York Times
By Julia Preston
June 28, 2014
President
Obama will ask Congress to provide more than $2 billion in new funds to
control the surge of illegal Central American migrants at the South
Texas border, and to grant broader powers for
immigration officials to speed deportations of children caught crossing
without their parents, White House officials said on Saturday.
Mr.
Obama will send a letter on Monday to alert Congress that he will seek
an emergency appropriation for rapidly expanding border enforcement
actions and humanitarian assistance programs to cope
with the influx, which includes record numbers of unaccompanied minors
and adults bringing children. The officials gave only a general estimate
of the amount, saying the White House would send a detailed request for
the funds when Congress returned after the
Fourth of July recess that began Friday and ends July 7.
The
president will also ask Congress to revise existing statutes to give the
Homeland Security secretary, Jeh Johnson, new authorities to accelerate
the screening and deportation of young unaccompanied
migrants who are not from Mexico. Fast-track procedures are already in
place to deport young migrants from Mexico because it shares a border
with the United States.
Mr.
Obama will also ask for tougher penalties for smugglers who bring
children and other vulnerable migrants across the border illegally, the
officials said.
“This is
an urgent humanitarian situation,” Cecilia Muñoz, the director of the
White House Domestic Policy Council, said in a telephone interview on
Saturday. “We are being as aggressive as we
can be, on both sides of the border,” she said. “We are dealing with
smuggling networks that are exploiting people, and with the humanitarian
treatment of migrants while also applying the law as appropriate.”
After the president declared a humanitarian crisis in early June, federal emergency management officials have been coordinating with the many federal agencies involved in finding detention shelters for the unaccompanied youths and in stepping up enforcement measures to deter more migrants from coming.
“The
uptick in activity at the border and the steps the administration has
put in place are extraordinary,” a White House official said. “We are
maxing out our capacities within the existing appropriated
monies.” Federal officials have opened shelters to detain unaccompanied
children at three military bases and are seeking facilities for other
shelters.
Border
authorities are required to turn over unaccompanied minors within 72
hours to the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the
shelters and seeks to locate family members
in this country who can receive the youths.
While
many unaccompanied children may qualify for some legal status here, many
others would not. Authorities want to eliminate delays in deporting
children determined to have no legal option to
stay, the White House officials said.
On
Thursday, Mr. Obama directed tough comments to Central American parents
in an interview on ABC News. “Do not send your children to the borders,”
the president said. “If they do make it, they’ll
get sent back. More importantly, they may not make it.”
White
House officials said they were not asking Congress to change other
existing legal protections for children apprehended without their
parents. The administration is working with the governments
of the three countries that are home to most of the migrants — El
Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras — to ensure the children are safe once
they are returned, the officials said.
Representative
Henry Cuellar, a Democrat whose district includes a long stretch of the
South Texas border, on Saturday visited about 1,000 migrants detained
at the Border Patrol station in McAllen.
He urged Congress to approve quick changes to laws on the handling of
unaccompanied minors.
“When
it’s Central American countries, there is a different process,” Mr.
Cuellar said. “One of the things we need to do is tweak the law, to give
Border Patrol the power to treat anybody the same
as we treat Mexicans.”
The
influx in the Rio Grande Valley has also included many families,
especially women with children. To discourage more families from
embarking on the dangerous journey across Mexico, the administration
is detaining more of them after they are caught.
House
Republican leaders chastised the president last week, saying his lax
enforcement of immigration laws had unleashed the flow. “Word has spread
to the Americas and beyond that the Obama administration
has taken unprecedented and most likely unconstitutional steps to shut
down the enforcement of our immigration laws,” Representative Robert W.
Goodlatte, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said at a hearing.
“It seems that Obama fiddles while our borders
implode.”
Mr. Goodlatte said he would work with the White House to strengthen the administration’s enforcement powers.
The new
proposals to deal with the border came as immigrant rights groups
signaled in more than 40 coordinated protests in 23 states during the
weekend that they were still hoping for action by
the president to slow the pace of deportations.
The
demonstrations were small, but fervent. In Chicago, a rally by activists
on Friday in front of the offices of the federal immigration
enforcement agency included a mock trial of Mr. Obama,
who was accused of engaging in harsh deportations. On Saturday,
protesters marched through the Boston Common, and in Detroit, they
rallied in front of the federal building.
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