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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that bipartisan
immigration reform, which has eluded Congress and the White
House for years, is still the solution. It is in fact
"inevitable," Pelosi said on the sidelines of a Democratic party
meeting in Leesburg, Virginia.
In Washington, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a
Republican, also called for bipartisan discussions on
immigration. But he focused on toughening U.S. asylum law, a
move that Democrats likely would oppose.
Democrats have not proposed a comprehensive immigration bill
since taking the majority in the House this year. Republicans
still hold the Senate.
Instead, Democrats last month proposed legislation offering a
pathway to citizenship for more than 2 million undocumented
immigrants who were brought illegally to the United States as
children. Known as Dreamers, they face possible deportation.
The House Democratic bill would also help immigrants from
countries hit by civil conflicts or natural disasters who have
temporary protected status, known as TPS.
U.S. officers arrested or denied entry to over 103,000 people
along the border with Mexico in March, a 35 percent increase
over the prior month and more than twice as many as the same
period last year, according to data released by U.S. Customs and
Border Protection this week.
The steady increase in migrant arrivals, which has been building
over the past several months, is driven by a growing number of
children and families, especially from Central America.
Trump has threatened to close the border, saying the United
States is "full." He has urged the building of a wall on the
southern border since before he became president in 2016.
Recently his ire has been directed at his own officials,
Congress, and Latin American countries, who he says have not
done enough to stop their citizens from traveling to the United
States.
Pelosi, asked Thursday what should be done at the border, said
the bipartisan legislation Trump signed to end a government
shutdown in February included money for judges and humanitarian
aid "to bring order to the border," but Trump has not used the
funds.
Although a bipartisan effort at comprehensive immigration reform
by Democrats and Trump last year failed, Pelosi said such an
overhaul still had a chance.
"I'm not giving up on the president on this," Pelosi said. "I
still say to him, 'We've got to have comprehensive immigration
reform'."
Representative Pramila Jayapal, speaking to reporters later,
said the Trump administration had manufactured a crisis at the
border in part by "stripping away" legal routes to immigration,
such as by stopping asylum seekers at legal ports of entry.
Trying to curb the flow of Central American asylum seekers, the
administration has been sending more people back to Mexico to
wait for their asylum claims to be heard by U.S. courts.
Representative David Cicilline said the Trump administration had
exacerbated a challenging border situation by not spending money
that was appropriated for border facilities and personnel, as
well as by cutting off aid to Central American countries for
sending migrants to the United States.
Cicilline, who runs the House Democrats' policy and
communications committee, denied Democrats were simply "looking
on helplessly" at the problems.
"But the administration has responsibility in all these areas.
And we can appropriate funding and we can pass legislation but
ultimately they are responsible for executing the immigration
laws in this country," he said.
(Reporting by Susan Cornwell; Editing by James Dalgleish)
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