Dems reject GOP’s fix to separation policy
WASHINGTON >> Top Democratic congressional leaders said Tuesday that concerns about holding migrant families in detention indefinitely make it unlikely that they would back a Republican effort to fix the separation crisis created by President Donald Trump.
The lack of support dimmed prospects for any quick legislative action before lawmakers leave Washington for their week-long Fourth of July recess as the government continues to grapple with the fallout from Trump’s policy.
Congressional Republicans have struggled to pass any immigration legislation, and Trump has been an unreliable partner, equivocating on bills and then telling GOP lawmakers not to bother until after the midterm elections, when he predicted Republican gains. The president summed up what he would like immigration law to be in a White House meeting with GOP lawmakers: “It’s called, ‘I’m sorry, you can’t come in.’ “
At the Capitol, both House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., said that they could not endorse a GOP plan to change existing law to allow families to be held together indefinitely in custody, extending a 20-day limit on child detentions established under a 1997 court settlement in what is known as the Flores case.
“Everybody in our caucus understands that the Flores decision is not improved by extending the length of time, it is weakened,” Pelosi said. “It is a bad bill; it is a cynical attempt on the part of Republicans, once again.”
Schumer said it remains up to Trump, not Congress, to reverse the “zero tolerance” enforcement policy that has prompted the practice of separating migrant children from their parents.
While his predecessors have released migrant families into the U.S. pending immigration court hearings, Trump has moved to end that “catch and release” policy — though one arm of his administration, Customs and Border Protection, said that it would stop referring parents caught crossing the border illegally for criminal prosecution.
An executive order signed by Trump last week aimed to reverse some aspects of the policy, but it cannot undo the Flores requirement, and its execution has been otherwise chaotic.
Even before Tuesday’s ruling, Bay Area refugee resettlement agencies saw once lengthy lists of refugees cleared to immigrate here dwindle, and they fear that’ll worsen in the years to come.
The number of refugees settling in the U.S. has dropped significantly — about 383 refugees were resettled in California between October 2017 and January, compared with 3,200 during the same period in the previous year, according to the most recent data from the state’s Department of Social Services.
The administration last year capped the annual number of refugees admitted to the U.S. at 45,000 — the lowest of any White House since the president began setting the ceiling on refugee administration in 1980, according to news reports.