Senate heads toward addressing border crisis ... by funding refugee resettlement & legal aid

Daniel Horowitz · June 19, 2019

Imagine a raging inferno at our border and the American people begging the politicians to take notice of the problem. Finally, after a year of cajoling, the politicians swiftly turn their attention to the inferno and douse the flames …with a blowtorch and lighter fluid.

Today, both parties got together and agreed to spend even more money on illegal aliens without a penny for deportations, interdiction, or enforcement, while declaring that they solved the border problem. After just minutes of marking up the first major border legislation in months, the Senate Appropriations Committee passed a $4.59 billion supplemental spending bill with no debate, 30-1.

Here are the highlights:

• It’s all about refugee resettlement: The lion’s share of the bill, $2.88 billion, is for HHS’ Office of Refugee Resettlement. In other words, the funding is all for resettling the very people that the bill was supposed to deter. Republican defenders of the bill will suggest that they have no choice; otherwise, things will get even more chaotic. But let things get “more chaotic.” It’s time the American people see the full scope of what is going on. Moreover, unlike illegal immigrants released by DHS, those sent to HHS are permanently resettled in our country, making it very hard to deport them. Also, thanks to a provision in the February omnibus, which the same apologists also said we had no choice but to pass, ICE is prohibited from using alien information provided to it by HHS for deportations.
  
• The bill places more mandates on HHS to provide more information about children separated from parents. Again, this is all about illegal aliens and not about protecting Americans.
  
• The remaining funding for DHS is entirely for humanitarian aid for illegal aliens, not a dime for deporting or for a media campaign in Central America dissuading would-be immigrants from coming here, as Obama proposed in 2014.
  
• Department of Justice funding includes $65 million for “30 new Immigration Judge Teams and as well as funding for the Legal Orientation Program (LOP) to educate detainees about the Immigration Court process and thus expedite Immigration Court proceedings.” Thus, we are further funding a legal aid program for illegal aliens with a program Jeff Sessions tried to eliminate, at a time when the entire border crisis is impelled by lawfare in the courts. The LOP offers “individual referrals to pro-bono legal services.” Also, as a way of getting around the federal bar on taxpayer funding for legal help, the LOP allows illegal aliens to “briefly discuss their cases with experienced LOP providers and pose more specific questions.”
  

Apologists for the administration will suggest that this is “the best they can do.” They will also suggest that it is necessary to fund these programs to prevent more chaos. But absent any effort to use any other leverage or executive action to fund enforcement and change the policies, they as may as well hand $4.5 billion straight to the cartels and smugglers. Everything is an excuse for a Republican Party that seems incapable of even holding the line Obama did in 2014. They have blown through every budget bill and refuse to demand more funding for ICE, policy changes, or fixes to the lawfare. With every one of these bills, they give Democrats even more lighter fluid, making current law worse, and then claim it’s the “best” they can get.

The question Trump voters need to ask is: What is the endgame? It’s OK to give in to Democrats once or twice if you have a solid plan to hold the line on other points of leverage – from invoking an 1182(f) shutoff and getting rid of DACA to designating the cartels as terrorists, deploying the military more aggressively, and using must-pass bills and budget bills in September to hold the line. But that has never happened for the first 2.5 years, and there are certainly no signs of that happening now.

However, in the Orwellian language of the bipartisan swamp, prioritizing illegal aliens is yet again is somehow touted as “funding border security.”

If Trump even got something – just one thing, whether ICE agents, more border interdiction assets, or just one policy change – it might be worth giving Democrats this funding. But we got nothing. The only thing this bill will accomplish is giving Democrats, particularly those Republicans need to defeat in order to win back the House majority, cover to say they put out the flames at the border. Fortunately for them, they get to do so while fanning them more than ever, just like they did in February, when GOP apologists gave us the same song and dance they are giving today.

https://www.conservativereview...ettlement-legal-aid/

GOP Senators Grant Policy Wins to Democrats in $4.6 Billion Migration Budget

GOP leaders in the Senate approved a $4.6 billion budget to fund an orderly Central American migration into the United States — even though the bill excludes any steps to reduce the crisis and also gives multiple pro-migration wins to Democrats.

The Democrats’ migration wins include a renewed legal shield for the illegal-immigrant parents in the United States who pay cartel-affiliated coyotes to smuggle their children into the United States, $1 billion to ease migrants’ orderly transit through the border, plus a denial of President Donald Trump’s request for extra detention beds and additional ICE enforcement agents.

Democrats won the gains even though they risk a public backlash because their pro-migration sympathies and policies are inviting and encouraging the crush of migrant adults and children at the U.S. border. That anti-Democratic backlash would likely be triggered in just a few weeks when the border agencies simply run out of money to administer the Democrat-encouraged migration, so creating further TV-magnified chaos on the border.

The GOP appropriations chairman, Sen. Richard Shelby downplayed the Democrats’ come-from-behind budget wins and urged Republicans not to use the budget fight for policy gains.

“Most importantly, [the budget] does not include poison pills from either party,” he claimed “This package does not include everything I wanted [and] does not include everything that [Democratic] Sen. [Patrick] Leahy would have wanted.” He then asked GOP Senators not to use the budget to win useful policy reforms:

I ask for my colleagues’ cooperation in holding any such amendments until this package reaches the Senate floor – just like we did during the ’19 process with such great success. In addition, today I ask my colleagues to refrain from offering any amendments [during the floor vote] that pertain to broader immigration policy.

The appropriate venue for such amendments is the authorizing committee, and Chairman Graham is marking up immigration legislation in the Judiciary Committee tomorrow. So I urge my colleagues that are interested in broader immigration policy to discuss their ideas with Chairman Graham and Ranking Member Feinstein. By adhering to this framework I believe that we will be able to move forward together with a strong bipartisan vote here today.

All 16 GOP Senators — including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — voted for the package. All 15 Democrats voted for the package, except for one Senator who demanded yet more concessions from the GOP.

Shelby’s budget must be approved by the Senate, and then be merged with a House supplemental budget bill.

Shelby’s budget includes almost no measures to help reduce the migrant inflows into Americans’ workplaces, schools, and communities. For example, it does not increase the detention funds needed to end the catch and release policies which allow migrants to get the U.S. jobs required to pay their smuggling debts.

The Republican leadership still is not willing to go to the mat for robust immigration enforcement and to solve this crisis — they want an easy way out,” said Jessica Vaughan, policy director at the Center for Immigration Studies.

She continued: “There are very few people in the Senate who are willing to fight to preserve the integrity of the immigration system. All the Republicans seem to be perfectly willing to go along with the President but are not willing to fight for the border money.”

“I don’t think any Senators’ kids are in the same schools as the migrants’ kids,” Vaughan added.

“Everything is an excuse for a Republican Party that seems incapable of even holding the line [President Barack] Obama did in 2014,” said Daniel Horowitz at Conservative Review. He wrote:

…both parties got together and agreed to spend even more money on illegal aliens without a penny for deportations, interdiction, or enforcement, while declaring that they solved the border problem

…

Apologists for the administration will suggest that this is “the best they can do.” They will also suggest that it is necessary to fund these programs to prevent more chaos. But absent any effort to use any other leverage or executive action to fund enforcement and change the policies, they as may as well hand $4.5 billion straight to the cartels and smugglers.

The migration crisis is providing U.S. business groups with hundreds of thousands of new consumers, workers, and renters. In May, for example, 144,000 adults and children added themselves to the U.S. labor market, consumer economy, and housing sector.

The passivity of the GOP-run Senate is very different from the House, where Democrats have loaded up the bill with policy riders that would cripple enforcement, Vaughan said.

Democrats pushed a slew of policy and budget gains into the Senate budget, despite Shelby’s “no poison pill” statement.

Democrats announced they blocked $400 million — including funds for detention — sought by the White House and “secured several important conditions to ensure the children in U.S. custody are treated humanely and provided appropriate care.”

The Democrats’ gains include gag orders to prevent immigration officials from sharing information about the illegal immigrant parents who are importing their foreign children via the government-managed “Unaccompanied Alien Children” pipeline. It provides $30 million to the non-profits that help migrants move to their target locations, $10 million for immigration lawyers to help migrants win asylum, and $9 million to help illegal migrants get their “UAC” children delivered faster.

The statement by Democrats praised the budget for including “$979 Million In New Funding For Migrant Care, Processing Facilities, Food, Medical Services, And Safe Transportation.”

The GOP budget document admitted the bill includes:

$112 million for migrant medical care and consumables, including clothing, baby formula, hygiene products, and other essential items … $45 million for detainee medical care … Prioritizes use of [pro-migration] community-based residential care and licensed facilities over large facilities … [and] Ensures that Senators and Members of Congress have access to shelters for the purpose of conducting oversight … Restates current law on applicability of Section 224 in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2019.

The GOP statement does not explain “Section 224” — but the text of 2019 law says DHS enforcement officers cannot use information from the Department of Health and Human Services to deport migrants who reveal themselves when they try to pick up their coyote-accompanied “UAC” children at HHS shelters.

Democrats hoped to win more concessions — such as taxpayer lawyers for illegals, and a denial of funds to the “Remain in Mexico” program. But Republicans swatted down those demands, partly because of the growing recognition that the Democrats’ pro-migration policies are encouraging “child recycling” by migrants and their cartel-affiliated coyotes.

Yet GOP chairman Shelby ignored the GOP concessions to the Democrats as he urged GOP legislators not to push for policy wins in the next spending budget:

We also need to have agreement on keeping poison pills out of our process in the week ahead. That was the foundation of our success in ’19. … that is what is allowing us to move forward together here today … I fear we will return to the old frustrations and failures of previous years. Something I believe none of us wants. I know I don’t.

In contrast, Democrats used the committee vote to portray themselves as morally superior to Shelby and the other Republicans on the panel.

After Shelby’s plea for cooperation, Leahy’s speech emotionally smeared Republicans and the president as uncaring and cruel to children – even though he and other Democrats protect the catch and release incentives that encourage the economic migrants to bring children to the border:

Families fleeing dire poverty, and awful, horrific violence in their home country, are coming to the U.S. seeking refuge. Customs and Border Protection facilities are well over capacity and it has led to deplorable conditions for these migrant families. When you walk past some of these cages full of children, what I’m struck by, because I think of when our grandchildren are playing with their friends, you get all this sound of laughter and everything else, you walk by these cages, it is dead silence, dead silence. Nobody wants to look at you, nobody wants to smile. What is that doing for the [foreign] children for the rest of their lives? Children in our care are being forced to sleep, sometimes under bridges, families are being placed in outdoor pens, or so-called cages, without shelter. And if we do not act, [caring agencies] will run out of funding by the end of this month.

Leahy did not mention the taxpayers’ cost of accepting the huge numbers of migrants into the United States, nor did he spare a word about the burdens that ordinary Americans face amid the increased competition for wages, jobs, classroom seats, and low-cost housing. Instead, he preferred to present himself as protector of the foreign migrants and their children:

These are extraordinary circumstances, and we — all of us — have the opportunity to show the world what American values are by acting with compassion. We don’t need to tear children from their families. We do not address a humanitarian crisis by blindly detaining anyone who comes to our border seeking mercy and safety. We’re Americans, we don’t vilify the poor, abused, desperate, or hungry. We take proper care of those in our custody.

This package we’re concerned with today is primarily is a humanitarian assistance package. We don’t fund the administration’s detention-first policies that frankly, everyone knows, waste taxpayer dollars. We do provide, though, the resources for ICE to use alternatives in detention or to keep families together. We don’t fund the president border wall which does nothing to address this crisis but this package does provide the resources necessary to ensure the children and families fleeing violence and poverty receive appropriate medical care and legal assistance … I’m pleased we were able to add $65 million to hire more immigration judge teams to help process asylum claims … $30 million for grants for no-profits who care for migrants … $20 million for alternatives to detention. Again, we’re going to address this humanitarian crisis with American values and compassion … The bill is actually a good-faith compromise.

Other pro-migration Democrats joined the rhetorical assault on the mostly silent Republicans, several of whom voiced support for border agents without saying anything about the damage inflicted on American employees and families.

“We’re dealing with a humanitarian crisis … all because of this president’s very cruel and reckless policy,” said Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, from Washington state.

“There’s a gaping leadership vacuum,” said Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin, a co-author of the 2013 “Gang of Eight” amnesty legislation. “Our southern border today is much less secure than when Donald Trump took office,” said Durbin, who has opposed any reforms to the catch and release policy. The crowding in border detention centers “is unforgivable,” said Durbin, who has repeatedly denounced funding for extra detention beds.

In response, Shelby congratulated the Democrats for their “tone.”

He said: “I think we’ve got not just to set the substance but the tone for the Senate, and we’re doing this today, I hope we continue to do it because it is the only way we’re going to move things.”

“I agree with that,” Leahy responded.

“Good work,” Leahy said as Shelby ended the session.

https://www.breitbart.com/poli...on-migration-budget/