In his funding request for billions more in military aid for Ukraine and Israel, President Biden included a request for increased funding for security at the Mexico border. But House Republicans responded by linking their support for Ukraine and Israel aid to the most controversial immigration reforms Congress has considered in at least 50 years. GOP demands include mandatory government E-Verify before any worker starts a job in the U.S., preventing eligibility for asylum in the vast majority of cases, eliminating long-standing executive branch parole authority, and building Donald Trump’s border wall.
Earlier good news that a federal court had approved a historic settlement in the ACLU’s lawsuit to stop future family separation at the border, prohibiting the practice for the next eight years even if Trump is re-elected president in 2024, has been overshadowed by the current politics of immigration.
Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Kica Matos, president of the Los Angeles-based National Immigration Law Center, who talks about the Republican proposals, which she describes as “extreme anti-immigrant” in their intent and what her organization is doing to fight back.
KICA MATOS: We are looking at the possibility of the complete gutting of our nation’s asylum laws. Republicans want a return to Title 42, which in essence shuts the border down and requires asylum seekers to wait in Mexico as their cases are adjudicated. The Republicans also want to end a humanitarian parole program that is currently in place that allows a number of migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela coming to the US.
They want a return to family detention, so they want entire families to be put in detention centers. They want the border to be shut down if border crossings hit a certain limit. So, we are seeing a very radical package that Republicans are insisting must be in place on the immigration front in order for them to approve a spending bill. It is extreme to the core. It is a package of some of Trump’s greatest aspirations in terms of what he wanted to see happen under his administration and actually Title 42 is something he put in place when he was president.
There’s something else I didn’t talk about, which is an expansion of expedited removals. The Republicans also want the expedited removals to happen in the interior of the US, and what that means is that Immigrant and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would be able to immediately deport anywhere in the US people who made it to the interior of the US who had been in the U.S. two weeks or less. So, we’re looking at aggressive enforcement and deportations all over the country.
MELINDA TUHUS: What about people who have been here more than two weeks, like even many years, and are living and working and have families here. Are they also under threat?
KICA MATOS: Not under the provisions that are being offered by the Republicans. But what I will say is I think this is the beginning of what I think are going to be ongoing, very extreme anti-immigrant measures being advanced by Republicans, both in the House and the Senate.
MELINDA TUHUS: So, what can pro-immigrant rights organizations like yours and many others, what can you do? What are you doing?
KICA MATOS: We are forcefully advocating for the White House and particularly the Senate Democrats – including Sen. Chris Murphy, who is the lead negotiator on the Democratic side – to hold the line. We think all these measures are extreme and we are reminding them that the negotiations are one-sided. There is no counter on the pro-immigrant side that the Republicans are demanding. There is no pathway to legalization; there is no status for Dreamers; there is nothing there that is pro-immigrant, and that is troubling.
The other thing we are reminding Democratic senators and the White House is that this is not the way that you pass laws. The White House wants money in the budget for Ukraine in exchange for laws that will be permanent. So we ask, what happens next year? If we move forward with this, what is next on the line of policies that Republicans want to advance, and that they will advance by hijacking budget negotiations. That is a problematic way to engage in lawmaking. And so we want to remind them that this is not a wise way to engage in lawmaking.
And we also want to remind the White House and Senate Democrats that there have been efforts for decades to engage and to try to urge members of Congress to pass immigration laws. The last time we passed a comprehensive set of immigration laws was in 1986. We will never be able to engage in comprehensive negotiations around immigration laws if the president and the [Congress] cave on these sets of radical demands.
They are willing to move forward on the backs of vulnerable asylum seekers; people who are desperately fleeing from violence and persecution in their home countries and trying to avail themselves of laws that were enacted at the international level after World War II and our nation’s shameful history of rejecting boatloads of Jewish asylum seekers wanting to come to the US. That is the genesis of our human rights, international obligations to support asylum laws.
For more information, visit the National Immigration Law Center at nilc.org.
For the best listening experience and to never miss an episode, subscribe to Between The Lines on your favorite podcast app or platform: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Tunein+ Alexa, Castbox, Overcast, Podfriend,
iHeartRadio, Castro, Pocket Casts, RSS Feed.
Or subscribe to our Between The Lines and Counterpoint Weekly Summary.
