Senate Democrats Ready $2.7 Billion Border Plan

Wall Street Journal

By Kristina Peterson

July 22, 2014

Senate Democrats Ready $2.7 Billion Border Plan 

WASHINGTON—Senate Democrats are preparing legislation to allocate $2.7 billion this calendar year to deal with the surge of unaccompanied children and families from Central America entering the country, lawmakers and aides said. The legislation won't include a legal change the Obama administration has said is needed to return minors to their home countries more quickly.

Earlier this month, Mr. Obama had asked Congress for $3.7 billion over 15 months to respond to the influx of border-crossers. The money would go to new detention facilities, overtime pay for Border Patrol agents, more immigration judges to process cases and aid to help Central American countries repatriate the people sent home.

The Senate bill, to be introduced Wednesday by Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski (D., Md.), is a smaller sum because the senator felt emergency funding could be justified only through the end of the calendar year, a Senate Democratic aide said. Additional funding may be considered in the next fiscal year's spending bills.

"Based on a review of what is needed in calendar year 2014 to meet needs at the border, the bill reduces the president's request by $1 billion," Ms. Mikulski said in a statement Tuesday.

Senate Democrats won't include a change in a 2008 anti-trafficking law that the administration has said would help speed up the process of returning some of the migrants to their home countries. The current law requires that cases involving migrant children, other than those from Mexico and Canada, be heard in immigration courts, which are backlogged and often take years to deliver a deportation order or other outcome.

"This is a funding bill, so it does not include immigration legislation," Ms. Mikulski said.

Some Democrats say the president has flexibility under current law to speed up immigration cases, and that the legal change isn't needed. Some also say speedier deportations risk sending home minors who have legitimate legal grounds to stay in the U.S. and could return them to dangerous situations.

Reflecting Democrats' emphasis on protecting the migrants' legal rights, the Senate bill would provide $50 million for legal services for migrant children, more than the $15 million requested by the administration. It also would grant more funding than Mr. Obama had requested to hire immigration judges, calling for 50 new judges, 10 more than the president had proposed.

The bill matches the White House's request for $300 million for the State Department, but would provide slightly less money to the Homeland Security and Health and Human Services departments, given the bill's shorter time frame. Ms. Mikulski's bill would allocate $1.2 billion to Health and Human Services for caring for the children and $1.1 billion to Homeland Security to detain families and children at the border, as well as for their transportation and deportation.

The Senate measure also will include $225 million requested by the administration on Tuesday to go to Israel's antimissile defense system and $615 million in separate funding for emergency wildfire suppression activities.

The Democrats' bill is expected to encounter resistance from Republicans.

"It's too much money still," said Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican on the appropriations panel. He said he would oppose any bill that didn't change the 2008 anti-trafficking law. "It would be more money, same problem, if we don't change the law," he said.

In the House, Republicans are expected to soon propose their own legislation dealing with the border crisis that would grant significantly less than the $3.7 billion requested by Mr. Obama. The House GOP bill likely will include several policy changes aimed at tightening border security, including deployment of the National Guard.

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