Houston Chronicle
By Bill Lambrecht
June 21, 2012
WASHINGTON – Immigration turmoil reaching from the border to Capitol Hill has widened a political divide that both President Donald Trump and Democrats believe will work to their advantage in the midterm elections.
On the border, the confusion over Trump’s policies that split hundreds of immigrant families will continue well into the election season, embroiling all branches of government in a thicket of policy decisions and court cases over reuniting children with their parents.
Even the U.S. military is involved, with preparations to house as many as 20,000 migrant children — which would fill more than 300 school buses — on four military bases from July through December.
On Friday, two days after Trump issued an executive order ending separations, no blueprint existed for reuniting families and the government offered little assistance for those helping to locate more than 2,300 children kept in shelters and foster care since early May, immigrant advocates said.
They warned that the separations could begin again next month if the administration finds no way around the two-decade-old legal settlement – known as the Flores Agreement – that allows children to be held with families for no more than 20 days.
On Capitol Hill, blowback from the family separations has turned the improbable task of achieving immigration compromise to all but impossible. Congressional inaction would leave in limbo the hundreds of thousands of young immigrants who arrived under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which Obama initiated and Trump canceled.
Trump already had undermined GOP efforts to pass a bill, Republicans said, by tweeting this week about the likely failure of legislation for a DACA fix and additional border security, the last immigration bills in Washington with any hope of passing.
On Friday, the president likely sealed their fate by using Twitter to advise his party to give up the immigration fight for the rest of the year.
“Republicans should stop wasting their time on Immigration until after we elect more Senators and Congressmen/women in November,” Trump tweeted.
Nonetheless, House Republicans planned to proceed next week with legislation that would keep migrant families together in detention while authorizing $25 billion for the border wall the president wants and offering a pathway to citizenship to young undocumented immigrants.
Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, a pro-immigrant advocacy group, referred to the congressional action as a sideshow.
“The chance of a Republican Congress passing meaningful immigration reform in an election year is somewhere between nil and nil. So let’s not be paying so much attention to the sideshow that we’re missing the main event — which is the fact that our government has seized children from parents and has no plan to reunite them,” he said
Many Democrats had already concluded that campaigning to retake control the House was a better bet than agreeing to the president’s demand for border wall funding.
“I think the only hope we have for a legislative solution is to have a new Congress,” said U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-San Antonio. “The best hope for Dreamers is a new Congress and that, in the meantime, these court orders will stay in place so that they can keep their status.”
What little time remains before Congress turns foursquare to the fall elections is complicated by the fallout from the family separation policy. The Senate, too, is dealing with competing plans to prevent family separation amid a debate shaping up over the wisdom of housing migrating children at military installations.
The DACA problem and family separation both involve the question of migrant children – those brought to the United States as children over the years and, recently, those who remain separated from their parents after arriving from Central America.
Recent polling suggests that for now, at least, Democrats have public opinion on their side.
A Quinnipiac University poll published this week showed that by a more than 2-1 margin voters opposed removing children from families. The finding was similar to a survey result in Texas, where a University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll this week showed that Texas voters oppose the practice, 57-28 percent.
Both surveys reflected the partisan gulf on immigration, with Republicans telling pollsters that they support dividing families in the cause of border security.
For Trump, whose job approval numbers have ticked up recently, the opposition reflects a challenge. Typically, he aims his hard-edged policies and the rhetoric that surround them toward his political base. But heading to November he must make a persuasive case more broadly for his “zero-tolerance” border security policy.
Ira Mehlman, media director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, an advocacy group pressing for limits on immigration, believes that the Trump administration needs to do a better job of explaining.
“What would make sense to most voters is that you should not treat children arriving with their parents as though they were trafficking victims and there ought to be a more reasonable time to detain families as unit to make a determination if they have a right to enter the United states or not,” he said. “If the Democrats oppose keeping families together and would rather say that anybody who shows up with a child should be allowed into the United States, they can certainly make that case to the American people.”
Republican pollster Whit Ayres sees peril to members of his party if Congress fails to pass an immigration package.
“It would certainly help the country and the reputation of Congress if they could pass at least limited immigration legislation that is supported by the overwhelming majority of the American people; 80 percent Americans want a secure border and 80 percent of Americans want the DACA kids to stay. You would think it would not be rocket science to accomplish both,” he said.
Ayres, who aligns with GOP moderates, has pressed his party to broaden its appeal. In a 2016 book, he contended that Republicans have a worn-out business model in need of overhaul to appeal to minorities and younger voters.
“Conceivably, a hard-line immigration position could be attractive in many of the deep red states that hold Senate elections this fall. But control of the House is going to be determined largely by suburban districts and more diverse districts,” he said.
On Monday, a group of senators planned to reconvene in hopes of reaching a compromise aimed solely at preventing family separation. Democrats propose releasing parents facing prosecution along with their children and monitoring them to ensure they show up for immigration court hearings.
But Republican senators, who refer to that policy as “catch and release,” want a change in the law to give Homeland Security the legal ability to indefinitely detain families and children together. Their proposal would allow the government to effectively avoid the Flores Agreement.
Texas Sen. John Cornyn, the Senate’s No. 2 Republican who, along with Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz, are co-sponsoring the bill, noted in a floor speech Thursday that their plan would provide for an additional 225 immigration judges and speed legal proceedings for parents and children.
“We can come together, we can fix this problem swiftly and ensure these children are kept together with their families,” Cornyn said.
Meanwhile, Laredo Rep. Henry Cuellar set his sights on the roots of the border problem – dysfunction in the Central American nations from which people are fleeing.
Cuellar helped secure $595 million for Central America this week in a spending bill and inserted wording expressing Congress’s concern that the State Department has yet to spend $800 million already authorized for tackling conditions prompting people to leave.
“We need to do more to help these countries and get these countries moving,” Cuellar said at a House Appropriations Committee hearing.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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