US lawmakers ‘push’ DACA immigration bill

San Diego backs Trump

WASHINGTON, April 18, (Agencies): Pressure grew in the US House of Representatives on Tuesday to debate legislation protecting young undocumented immigrants from deportation, in a challenge to President Donald Trump, who has declared as “dead” an existing program allowing them to legally study and work in the United States.

A bipartisan group of Republican and Democratic lawmakers scheduled a press conference on Wednesday to discuss their plans to force debate in the full House on a few different proposals for helping the estimated 800,000 immigrants. They are expected to announce that they have more than 218 House members on board with moving ahead with a bipartisan bill.

That is the minimum number needed in the 435-member House to pass bills.

For years, Republicans have been deeply divided on immigration legislation, despite polling that shows a significant majority of voters want to help young immigrants who crossed into the United States illegally through no fault of their own.

A House Democratic aide with knowledge of the maneuverings said an announcement of the supporters was aimed at pressuring House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican, to move to either bring such legislation to the House floor or to intensify high-level negotiations on crafting a new compromise bill.

Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong, said in an emailed statement, “We continue to work to find the support for a solution that addresses both border security and DACA.”

DACA is the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program created in 2012 by then-president Barack Obama, giving temporary legal status to immigrants brought illegally into the United States by their parents or other relatives when they were children.

Brown

Ordered

In September, Trump announced he was ending the program, effective March 5. But a court has ordered the program to continue for existing beneficiaries until legal challenges to its termination are resolved.

Strong added that Republicans already have made “good-faith offers” to protect the young immigrants. Those offers, which included significant reductions in legal immigration that are being sought by the Trump administration, were rejected by Democrats.

Representative Steny Hoyer, the No. 2 House Democrat, said that a bipartisan bill unveiled in January now has “over 218 votes . ... I think it’s going to have significantly over” that number.

If Ryan were to refuse to bring such legislation to the floor, the bill’s supporters could employ a rarely used procedure to force action, if they have at least 218 backers.

Under one strategy being weighed, the House could debate the bipartisan bill, along with two or three other alternatives. A similar debate played out in the Senate last February, with all the measures failing to win enough votes to advance.

In related news, San Diego County leaders voted on Tuesday to join the Trump administration’s court challenge to a California law limiting cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, amid a conservative backlash to the so-called sanctuary movement.

The Republican-controlled Board of Supervisors voted to direct the county attorney to file a friend-of-thecourt brief supporting the administration’s lawsuit at the first available opportunity, which is likely to be on appeal, board Chair Kristin Gaspar said.

The 3-1 vote during a closed-door session, with one of the five supervisors absent, followed an hour-long packed public hearing on the matter.

Outside, pro-sanctuary protesters peacefully picketed the meeting, carrying signs with slogans such as “Sanctuary Cities Make Us Safer,” and “We Are All Immigrants.”

The action by leaders of California’s second-largest county followed a similar move last month by the allRepublican board of supervisors for neighboring Orange County, the state’s third-most-populous county.

The city council of the tiny Orange County municipality of Los Alamitos went even further on Monday night, approving an ordinance to “exempt” the town of about 12,000 people from the state’s sanctuary law.

The city of San Diego ranks as California’s secondbiggest by population, and with the adjacent Mexican city of Tijuana, comprises the largest cross-border metropolitan area shared between the United States and Mexico.

Political

California moved to the forefront of political opposition to Republican President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration with enactment last year of the first statewide law aimed at restricting local law enforcement participation in federal deportation activity.

The measure bars state and local authorities from keeping undocumented immigrants who are incarcerated locked up any longer than otherwise necessary for the purpose of allowing US immigration agents to take them into custody.

It also prohibits police from routinely inquiring about the immigration status of people detained in an investigation or in traffic stops.

But the law, known as SB-54, allows local police to notify the federal government if they have arrested an undocumented immigrant with a felony record and permits immigration agents access to local jails.

Trump on Tuesday slammed California Gov Jerry Brown’s posture on sending National Guard troops to the Mexican border even as Brown said he was nearing agreement on joining the president’s mission.

The volley of words came a day after federal officials said Brown rejected a proposal for the California Guard’s specific border duties, a characterization that state officials disputed.

“Looks like Jerry Brown and California are not looking for safety and security along their very porous Border,” Trump said in an early-morning tweet. “He cannot come to terms for the National Guard to patrol and protect the Border.”

Brown’s office responded with a tweet reiterating its public stance that nothing has changed since the governor pledged 400 troops last week and that the state was waiting on a response to proposed contract that would include a ban on any activities related to immigration enforcement.

The Democratic governor said California was “pretty close” to an agreement with the administration to join the nation’s three other Mexican border states — Arizona, New Mexico and Texas — for the Guard’s third largescale border deployment since 2006.