Outrage grows over immigration policy that splits families
WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans mobilized on Tuesday to end the administration’s policy of separating children from their migrant parents — and the mounting political backlash — as President Donald Trump publicly held firm, warning that those illegally crossing the border “infest our country.”
Yet cracks appeared in the White House’s hard line as well, as outrage against the policy grew amid continued media coverage of bedraggled children penned in austere government detention centers.
An administration official suggested the president might sign a narrow bill to address the issue, despite his public demands that any measure include $25 billion for his promised border wall and new limits on legal immigration.
“The president wants a comprehensive fix,” the official stressed, adding, “but he is willing to strongly consider legislation that would address the separation issue.”
Late in the day Trump met at the Capitol with House Republicans about their proposals for a comprehensive immigration bill. After rambling remarks, including familiar recollections about his 2016 victory, he spoke little of the controversy over separating families or immigration policy generally, and left without giving party leaders the full endorsement they sought for their bill, according to accounts from those in the room.
Hours earlier, in a partisan speech to a friendly smallbusiness organization, Trump stuck to his demand that Congress address the crisis as part of a wide-ranging immigration bill that includes money for a border wall. He ignored calls, including from Republicans, that he could end his own six-weekold policy simply with a word.
Faced with the president’s resistance to act, however, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters at the Capitol that Senate Republicans would devise “a plan that keeps families together.”
The plan seems likely to accomplish that by detaining families as a whole, not by allowing them to be free pending a deportation hearing, as was typically the case until last month.
McConnell’s deputy, Sen. John Cornyn, RTexas, said the Senate could act “in a matter of days, hopefully this week.” More than a dozen Senate Republicans signed a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions urging him to suspend family separations until a legislative fix can be signed into law.
“I don’t think anyone has the patience to let him hold children hostage for a wall,” one senior Republican aide in the Senate said. “He can get that funding the old-fashioned way, through a budget request.”
It remained unclear, however, whether House Republicans would go along. And Senate Democrats, believing they have the upper hand politically, are resisting giving Republicans help to fix the issue.
“Legislation is not the way to go here, when it’s so easy for the president to sign it,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer told reporters.
More Republicans echoed that sentiment, even as they searched for legislative fixes.
“The White House could change it in five minutes, and they should. It’s a mistake. It’s a change in policy by this administration,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander, a senior Republican from Tennessee.
Senators in both parties have proposed limited legislation to end the family separations, which have put more than 2,000 children in detention centers since the Trump administration announced its “zero tolerance” policy six weeks ago. Many parents now face criminal as well as civil prosecution, and because children can’t be jailed with their parents, they are detained separately.
All Senate Democrats have endorsed a bill by California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, while Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican facing re-election in Texas, where much of the crisis is playing out, has proposed a separate measure. The proposals take different tacks to prevent the Department of Homeland Security from separating children from their parents at the border.