Republicans to debut sweeping immigration bill with vote in coming weeks
Anna Giaritelli
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Republicans have finally coalesced around a massive package of immigration and border security proposals that House GOP leadership will formally debut Thursday, two weeks before an anticipated floor vote.
House Republicans on Thursday will announce a plan to marry a recently marked-up Judiciary Committee bill on immigration law with the Homeland Security Committee’s own border security legislation.
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House Homeland Security Chairman Mark Green of Tennessee, House GOP Vice Chairman Michael Guest of Mississippi, Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana, and House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio will hold a press conference on Capitol Hill to debut the all-encompassing bill.
GOP leadership has promised to bring the bill to the House floor in May. Green told Axios on Wednesday that they would do so on May 11, which is when the public health policy known as Title 42 is slated to expire and is also when U.S. border officials expect an unprecedented mass migration event that could last weeks.
The two packages themselves are comprised of individual bills and have been dragged through the mud over the past three months as Texas Republicans fought internally about what proposals to include and which committees to move them through.
The biggest beef was between Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX), whose district stretches along 800 of the southern border’s 2,000 miles, and Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), whose district encompasses the well-off Central Texas region between San Antonio and Austin.
Gonzales, a centrist Republican, refused to support the House Freedom Caucus member’s language requiring the Homeland Security secretary to refuse admission to illegal immigrants if the U.S. government does not have a way to detain them through court proceedings or a way to return them to Mexico.
Although most Texas Republicans supported Roy’s push, Gonzales said it was “un-Christian” for how it barred potentially legitimate asylum-seekers from being released into the U.S., and he vowed to block the bill from making it to the House floor.
Roy’s proposal was first filed in January and was one of several bills that the Freedom Caucus was able to get Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to agree to fast-track to the floor in order for him to win their votes for him as speaker of the House. However, the bills were later folded into the 137-page Judiciary bill, including Roy’s proposal — albeit in watered-down language.
The Roy section was then removed during last Wednesday’s marathon markup of the immigration legislation through an amendment that Roy himself submitted and was adopted by the committee. The Judiciary bill is titled the Border Security and Enforcement Act.
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Homeland lawmakers conducted a marathon markup of their own border bill on Wednesday that, despite starting at 10 a.m., went late into the night.
In several tense moments of debate between Democrats and Republicans, ranking member Bennie Thompson (D-MS) accused Republicans of using the word “alien” to dehumanize immigrants.
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A testy exchange between him and Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC) at the top of the hearing set the tone.
As the hours passed, lawmakers considered Democrats’ requests to change language in the bill or do away with parts of it altogether.
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The Homeland Security bill, known as the Border Reinforcement Act, would reinstate mandates for physical barriers, infrastructure, and technology on the southern border. Although the Trump administration funded 800 miles of border wall projects, it completed just over 450.
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Additionally, the bill seeks to bolster Customs and Border Protection staffing levels, modernize and enhance technology, demand transparency from the Department of Homeland Security, address Border Patrol retention, support local law enforcement’s assistance at the border, and rein in the CBP’s use of humanitarian parole.
A full breakdown of the bill, as previewed to the Washington Examiner last week, can be found here.