GOP plan: Hold kids longer, reunite families

WASHINGTON — Republicans on Capitol Hill anxiously searched on Tuesday for a way to end the Trump administration’s policy of separating families after illegal border crossings, with the focus shifting to a new plan to keep children in detention longer than now permitted — but with their parents.

GOP House leaders, increasingly fearful of voter reaction in November, were to meet with President Donald Trump Tuesday evening at the Capitol to try to work out some resolution.

Leaders in both the House and Senate are struggling to shield the party’s lawmakers from the public outcry over images of children taken from migrant parents and held in cages at the border. But they are running up against Trump’s shifting views and his worries that, according to one adviser, the lack of progress toward his signature border wall makes him look “soft”

Many lawmakers say he could simply reverse the administration’s “zero tolerance” policy and keep families together. But some worry he could also inject a new dynamic, rejecting emerging GOP proposals and potentially exacerbating an already tough situation as his party heads toward a difficult midterm election.

“What I’m asking Congress to do is to give us a third option, which we have been requesting since last year, the legal authority to detain and promptly remove families together as a unit,” Trump said Tuesday. “We have to be able to do this. This is the only solution to the border crisis.”

House GOP leaders are scrambling to revise their broader current immigration bill to include a provision to resolve the situation.

The major change being unveiled Tuesday would loosen rules that now limit the amount of time minors can be held to 20 days, according to a GOP source familiar with the measure. Instead, the children could be detained with their parents for extended periods.

The revised provision would also give Department of Homeland Security the authority to use $7 billion in border technology funding to pay for family detention centers, said the person, who was not authorized to do so by name and commented only on condition of anonymity.