Morning commuter traffic waits to cross into the United States from Tijuana, Mexico, in March. South of San Diego, the San Ysidro Port of Entry is the largest land crossing between the two countries and the most transited in the Western Hemisphere. Some 70,000 vehicles and 20,000 pedestrians pass through there daily. Border and immigration issues have become dominant themes in the 2024 presidential election. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

MYTH: Immigrants increase crime rates

Among the most persistent political talking points raised by opponents of immigration is that migrants bring crime with them into the U.S.

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” former President Donald Trump famously said on the campaign trail in 2016.

Amendment 1: ‘Proactive’ or ploy to stir up anti-immigrant vote?

“Has anybody ever seen the movie ‘Gangs of New York’?” Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance asked during a meeting with the Milwaukee Police Association in August. “We know that when you have these massive ethnic enclaves forming in our country, it can sometimes lead to higher crime rates.”

In reality, the opposite is true. Immigrants are far less likely than U.S.-born citizens to commit crimes, numerous studies show. One study of incarceration rates going back over 150 years — between 1870 and 2020 — found that U.S.-born citizens were consistently more likely to end up in prison than immigrants. And the gap between the two groups has only increased in recent years, with immigrants 60% less likely to be incarcerated than U.S.-born citizens today, according to the nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research.

Assertions that immigrants have caused spikes in crime in the areas where they settle have also been proven false. Overall, incidents of crime, including violent crime, have fallen in cities across the country since peaking during the pandemic, FBI data shows. And while politicians have claimed that border cities have been overwhelmed by lawlessness and chaos, the data shows that crime rates, including for homicide, are far lower than the national average.

The equation of immigrants with criminals is exhausting to hear for Irayda Flores, a businesswoman in Phoenix, Arizona. Flores moved to the Grand Canyon State from Sonora, Mexico, in 2004, hoping to make her entrepreneurial dreams a reality. Since then, her seafood wholesale business, El Mar de Cortez Corp, has thrived, serving restaurants across the city and employing more than a dozen people. But despite the example she and other immigrants provide, politicians continue to frame them as villains.

The rhetoric is the same every election year, she said, and it ignores the positive contributions of many of the immigrants who left their home countries to seek a better future.

“Politicians talk about the migrant community like they’re criminals, like they are really awful people,” Flores said. “But when migrants leave their country — their culture and the land that they were born and grew up in — they do it because they’re searching for opportunity. And searching for a new opportunity means they come here with the intention to work and get ahead.”

Dismissing all immigrants as criminals is harmful, she added, and unfair to the work many immigrants have put in to make a difference in their host communities.

“You can’t generalize or treat an entire immigrant group as criminals because there are people who’ve lived in the country for decades, and they bring benefits to the table,” Flores said. “They benefit the economy, they benefit their communities, and they deserve to be treated with respect.”

[subhed]MYTH: There’s an invasion at the U.S.-Mexico border

While the campaign season has prompted politicians to stir up voters about an “invasion” at the country’s southern border, the situation is more complex. In late 2023, the number of migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border hit record highs. In December 2023, more than 300,000 encounters between border officials and migrants occurred at the country’s southern border — an all-time high. Experts believe the surge was, in part, the result of a global spike in migration patterns caused by economic strains during the pandemic.

In January 2024 the record high set in December plummeted to about 176,000 encounters. The number eventually fell to a three-year low not seen since before the pandemic. In August, the month for which the most recent data is available, encounters increased slightly from to 107,503 from 104,101 in July.

MYTH: Fentanyl is smuggled into the country by migrants

The U.S.-Mexico border stretches across nearly 2,000 miles and includes 26 land ports of entry. U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents monitor both ports and the spaces in between. The vast majority of fentanyl is smuggled into the U.S. via legal routes by citizens, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security reports. More than 90% of interdicted fentanyl is confiscated by border officials at land ports of entry, according to DHS, and cartels mainly seek to move the drug across the border with the help of U.S. citizens. In fiscal year 2023, the latest year for which there is data, 86.4% of fentanyl trafficking convictions were citizens.

MYTH: Immigrants take advantage of public benefits?

In most cases, immigrants who aren’t citizens of the United States are ineligible for public benefits. Federal programs like Section 8 housing aid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Medicaid and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)? are all strictly reserved for U.S. citizens.

Immigrants who aren’t citizens also can’t receive subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, and they can’t apply for federal health insurance coverage through the marketplace.

People with legal permanent residency status, however, may be able to access some public benefits after reaching the five-year residency mark.

Some federal protections are in place to ensure that migrants have access to care if they are facing life-threatening circumstances. Emergency Medicaid helps migrants without legal status receive urgent medical treatment, and some benefits are available to migrant women under the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program.

Eligibility for state public benefit programs varies across the country and can range from access to driver’s licenses to in-state tuition rates and scholarships.

MYTH: It’s easy to gain U.S. citizenship?

Gaining citizenship is a costly, multistep and complicated process. And backlogged naturalization and asylum systems mean long wait times for hopeful migrants.

Those seeking to achieve legal status through marriage must pass a number of hurdles meant to verify that the marriage is genuine, including periodic interviews with immigration officials. Couples often spend hundreds or thousands of dollars and years in the application process.

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals grants people without legal status who were brought to the country as minors protection from deportation and a temporary work permit, but recipients must meet strict criteria to qualify. That includes living in the U.S. since 2007, having arrived in the country before turning 16, no significant criminal convictions and either current enrollment in a high school, a diploma or a GED.

DACA recipients who were accepted into the program must reapply for a renewal every two years. And while recipients can apply for legal residency status if they are eligible through their family or via employment-based immigration, the DACA program is currently frozen. Though applications are still being accepted, they aren’t being processed while the program is under ongoing litigation that threatens to end it altogether.

Asylum seekers must undergo fear screenings with immigration officials to determine if their concerns about persecution or threats to their lives warrant being granted protection in the U.S. New guidance issued by the Biden administration barring the consideration of asylum claims when high numbers of migrant encounters occur has made it more difficult for people to request asylum.

Those hoping for a resolution in their asylum or refugee cases might wait years. In 2019, the immigration backlog ballooned to more than 1 million cases, a number that only doubled in the following years. As of September, the number of pending immigration cases exceeded 3 million. The average time it takes to close a case is four years, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, an organization that compiles and analyzes federal immigration data.

MYTH: Immigrants don’t pay taxes

Roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants live in the United States, and all of them pay some form of taxes. An analysis of the 2022 American Community Survey, an annual demographics survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, estimated that immigrants contributed $383 billion in federal taxes, and $196 billion in state and local taxes. And while people without legal status can’t benefit from Social Security, the administration receives about $13 billion from the paychecks of workers without citizenship status every year.

Saúl Rascón moved to the U.S. with his family when he was 5-years-old. He became a DACA recipient in high school and has been employed ever since. Today, he works with Aliento Votes, a pro-immigrant voter outreach campaign. Accusations that immigrants don’t pay their taxes irritate Rascón, who views it as a way to diminish the demographic group’s contributions.

“It’s particularly frustrating when immigrants are pinned as this economic deficit and harm when it’s been proven time and time again that they’re not,” he said.

The problem, Rascón said, is that the claim is believable to the average voter who doesn’t do additional research. And that claim is dangerous for all immigrants, including himself, because it could engender hostility towards the community as a whole.

The spread of disinformation about immigrants is harmful, he added, not just because it fosters anti-immigrant sentiment, but also because it makes it more difficult to find common ground when it comes to changing the country’s immigration system. While Republican politicians have focused on riling up their base against immigrants, Democrats have shifted to the right on the issue, increasingly spotlighting enforcement policy to capture as many votes as possible.

“We’re no longer focusing our energy on our Dreamers and DACA, on undocumented people who’ve been here, and contributing taxes,” Rascón said. “We’ve seen a shift towards border security, which isn’t unproductive but it’s not the best use of our time and resources.”

Aerial view of the Bridge of the Americas Land Port of Entry. One of four crossings in El Paso, the Bridge of the Americas is located on the international border separating El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico and connects with the Mexican port of “Cordova” in Juarez, Chihuahua. (Photo by Jerry Glaser/U.S. Customs and Border Protection)

This is one in a series of States Newsroom reports on the major policy issues in the presidential race.

WASHINGTON — Immigration remains at the forefront of the 2024 presidential election, with both candidates taking a tougher stance than in the past on the flow of migrants into the United States.

GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump has made immigration a core campaign issue, as he did in his two previous bids for the White House, and has expanded his attacks this time around to include false claims about migrants with legal status in specific locations like Springfield, Ohio.

He’s often demonized immigrants in speeches and at rallies, and has vowed to enact the mass deportation of millions of people living in the United States without authorization.

Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, like the Biden administration, has shifted to the right on immigration, embracing limits to asylum and advocating for added border security, as migrant encounters hit a record high at the end of 2023. With those new policies in place, migrant encounters have sharply fallen this year.

Vice President Harris in her remarks on immigration has mainly stuck to her promise to sign into law a bipartisan border security deal that three senators struck earlier this year. That legislation, if enacted, would have been the most drastic change in U.S. immigration law in decades.

The deal never made it out of the Senate. Once Trump expressed his displeasure with the bill, House Republicans pulled their support, and the GOP in the upper chamber followed suit.

Harris has not detailed her positions on immigration beyond her support of the border security bill.

Regardless of who wins the White House, the incoming administration will be tasked with the fate of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protects a little over half a million undocumented people brought into the United States as children without authorization. A Texas legal challenge threatens the legality of the program, and the case could make its way up to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Additionally, work visas, massive backlogs in U.S. immigration courts and renewing those individuals in Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, will fall to the next administration. Neither candidate has laid out how they would handle those issues.

The Trump campaign did not respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment.

The Harris campaign pointed to the vice president’s remarks from an Arizona campaign rally where she acknowledged the U.S. has a broken immigration system and put her support behind border security and legal pathways to citizenship.

Harris also took a September trip to the southern border.?

Promise: border security deal

Harris has made the bipartisan border deal a centerpiece of her campaign. She’s often promised to sign it into law and has used the proposal to criticize Trump.

“We can create an earned pathway to citizenship and secure our border,” Harris said during the Democratic National Convention in August.

The bill negotiated by senators would need to reach the 60-vote threshold to advance through the chamber. But after Trump came out against it and it was brought to the floor, the Republican who handled negotiations with Democrats and the White House, Oklahoma’s James Lankford, voted against his own bill.

Additionally, House Democrats in the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and immigration groups were not supportive of the bill.

“I will bring back the bipartisan border security bill that he killed, and I will sign it into law,” Harris said at the DNC.

The measure raises the bar for asylum, and would require asylum seekers to provide greater proof of their fear of persecution.

The bill would have also provided $20 billion for the hiring of more than 4,000 asylum officers, legal counsel for unaccompanied minors and the purchase of drug screening technology at ports of entry. It would also have provided $8 billion for detention facilities to add 50,000 detention beds.

The plan did include some legal pathways to citizenship for Afghans who aided the U.S. and fled in 2021 after the U.S. withdrew from the country. It also provided up to 10,000 special visas for family members of those Afghan allies.

It also would have added 250,000 green-card employee and family-based visas over the next five years.

Promise: mass deportations

“Send them back,” is chanted at Trump’s rallies, where he often promises to carry out mass deportations.

There are roughly 11 million people in the U.S. without legal authorization.

“We’re going to have the largest deportation,” Trump said at a June campaign rally in Racine, Wisconsin. “We have no choice.”

Under Trump’s vision, mass deportation would be a broad, multipronged effort that includes invoking an 18th-century law; reshuffling law enforcement at federal agencies; transferring funds within programs in the Department of Homeland Security; and forcing greater enforcement of immigration laws.

Promise: an end to birthright citizenship

In a May 2023 campaign video, Trump said if he wins the White House, one of his first moves would be to issue an executive order ending birthright citizenship, which means anyone born in the U.S., regardless of their parents’ status, is an American citizen.

This is enshrined in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution and would likely face legal challenges.

“As part of my plan to secure the border, on Day One of my new term in office, I will sign an executive order making clear to federal agencies that under the correct interpretation of the law, going forward, the future children of illegal aliens will not receive automatic U.S. citizenship,” Trump said.

Promise: deportation of pro-Palestinian students on visas

Across the country, students on college campuses during the past year have set up encampments and protests calling for a cease-fire in Gaza and an end to the Israel-Hamas war.

In the initial attack on Oct. 7, 2023, more than 1,200 people were killed in Israel and hundreds taken hostage. As the war has continued, researchers estimate that as many as 186,000 Palestinians have been killed, directly and indirectly.

At a private dinner in May, Trump told donors that “any student that protests, I throw them out of the country,” according to the Washington Post.

“You know, there are a lot of foreign students,” Trump said. “As soon as they hear that, they’re going to behave.”

Trump also made that vow during a campaign rally in October 2023 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

“We’ll terminate the visas of all of Hamas’ sympathizers, and we’ll get them off our college campuses, out of our cities and get them the hell out of our country, if that’s OK with you,” he said.

The Republican party made it part of its party platform in July.?

Promise: an end to parole programs

With immigration reform stalled in Congress, one way the Biden administration has handled mass migration is the use of humanitarian parole programs. Those humanitarian parole programs have been used for Ukrainians fleeing the war with Russia, Afghans fleeing after the U.S. withdrawal and for Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans.

More than 1 million people have been paroled into the U.S. under the executive authority extended by the Biden administration.

Trump said in a November 2023 campaign video? he would end this policy on his first day in office.

“I will stop the outrageous abuse of parole authority,” Trump said.

Promise: green cards for foreign students

In a June podcast interview, Trump said that he was supportive of giving green cards to foreign students if they graduate from a U.S. college.

“What I will do is, if you graduate from a college, I think you should get, automatically as part of your diploma, a green card to be able to stay in this country,” Trump said. “That includes junior colleges, too.”

This would be done through rulemaking from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

On the podcast, Trump also said he would extend H-1B visas for tech workers. Those visas allow employers to hire foreign workers for specialized occupations, usually for a high skill role.

Promise: more screenings of immigrants

On social media, the Trump campaign said it would put in place an “ideological screening” for all immigrants and bar those who have sympathies toward Hamas.

Promise: Trump-era immigration policies?

Trump has stated in various campaign speeches that he plans to reinstate his immigration policies from his first term.

That would include the continuation of building a wall along the southern border; reissuing a travel ban on individuals from predominantly Muslim countries; suspending travel of refugees; reinstating a public health policy that barred migrants from claiming asylum amid the coronavirus pandemic; and reinstating the remain in Mexico policy that required asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while awaiting their cases.

Protesters in front of the Senate side of the U.S. Capitol urged Congress to pass the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, in December 2017 in Washington, D.C. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — After concluding oral arguments Thursday, a panel of federal judges will determine the fate of a program that has shielded from deportation more than half a million immigrants lacking permanent legal status who came into the United States as children.

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, a 12-year program that was meant to be temporary during the Obama administration while Congress passed a pathway to citizenship, has been caught in a years-long battle after the Trump administration moved to end the program.

Greisa Martinez Rosas, the executive director for the youth immigration organization United We Dream, said in a statement that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit should reject the “baseless lawsuit” brought by Texas and other states.

“DACA recipients have withstood over a decade of attacks by violent, anti-immigrant officials and have kept DACA alive through their courage and resilience,” Rosas said. “I urge President (Joe) Biden and every elected official to treat this moment with the urgency it requires and to take bold and swift action to protect all immigrants once and for all. ”

A panel of three judges on the appeals court heard oral arguments on behalf of the program from the Justice Department, the state of New Jersey and an immigration rights group, all advocating the legality of the Biden administration’s 2021 final rule to codify the program.

Last year the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas declared it unlawful and allowed current DACA recipients to continue renewing their status, but barred new applicants.

The Justice Department and the others asked the appeals court judges to consider three things. They are challenging whether the state of Texas has standing to show it was harmed by DACA; whether the regulation is lawful within presidential authority; and whether the trial court had the authority to place a nationwide injunction on the program.

The judges are Jerry Edwin Smith, appointed by former President Ronald Reagan; Edith Brown Clement, appointed by former President George W. Bush; and Stephen A. Higginson, appointed by former President Barack Obama.

The 5th Circuit in New Orleans covers Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi, and typically delivers conservative rulings.

Joseph N. Mazzara, arguing on behalf of the state of Texas, said that DACA harmed the state because there is a “pocketbook cost to Texas with regard to education and medical care.”

He said that the end of DACA would likely lead recipients to self-deport and “return to their country of origin,” which he argued would alleviate Texas’ financial costs.

It could take weeks or months for a ruling, which is likely to head to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the fate of DACA may be left to the incoming administration.

In a statement on Thursday’s oral arguments, Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, slammed the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump, for “targeting young people who grew up pledging allegiance to America.”

“Regardless of the outcome of this case, we should be very clear about what is at stake in this election,” she said. “Donald Trump tried to end DACA once, and if given the chance, he will not rest until he is successful.”

The Supreme Court in 2020 overturned the Trump administration’s decision to end the program, but on the grounds that the White House didn’t follow the proper procedure. The high court did not make a decision whether the program itself was unlawful or not.

States’ standing

Brian Boynton argued on behalf of the Biden administration.

He argued that the eight states that sued the Biden administration along with Texas have no standing because they did not demonstrate any harm caused by DACA.

Those other states challenging DACA include Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina, West Virginia, Kansas and Mississippi.

“Any person in the state of Texas, citizen or noncitizen, is entitled to precisely the same types of services, emergency health care services and public K through 12 education,” he said. “It’s not a situation where only someone with DACA is entitled to the services.”

Boynton asked the panel to uphold U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen’s policy of keeping DACA in place for current recipients – about 535,000 people – if the court decides to strike the program down while DACA continues to undergo the appeals process.

Hanen ruled in 2021 that DACA was unlawful, determining that the Obama administration exceeded its presidential authority in creating the program. He allowed current DACA recipients to remain in the program, but barred the federal government from accepting new applicants.

It’s estimated that there are 95,000 applicants that are blocked due to that order, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services data.?

The Biden administration then went through the formal rulemaking, which Hanen reviewed and again deemed unlawful, prompting the appeal before the three judges.

Boynton argued against a nationwide injunction on DACA recipients being able to apply for the program.

“With respect to the propriety of nationwide injunctions, it’s very clear that an injunction should be narrowly crafted to provide a remedy only to the party that is injured, and here that would be Texas,” he said.

Nina Perales, of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, argued that Texas in its legal arguments is including spending costs for students in K-12 schools who cannot be DACA recipients because those recipients are over 18 and have aged out of the program.

Perales addressed the health care argument from Texas and said Texas did not show the incurred health costs of just DACA recipients.

“Texas points to health care spending on the entire undocumented immigrant population, as Texas estimates it,” she said. “Not DACA recipients.”

“It’s been widely understood that DACA recipients overall provide a net benefit to their state,” she added.

This story has been updated with comments from Vice President Kamala Harris.

Kentuckians will be voting this fall on two constitutional amendments. This is the view approaching the Sugar Maple Square polling site in Bowling Green, May 21, 2024. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Austin Anthony)

One of the two constitutional amendments Kentucky voters will decide this November would prohibit people who are not citizens of the United States from voting in Kentucky elections — something that already does not happen.

The amendment’s sponsor, state Sen. Jason Howell, R-Murray, called it a “proactive” measure to protect election integrity. Others say the amendment could discourage immigrants who are citizens from exercising their right to vote and that Republicans are using it to fan anti-immigrant fears to turn out their base.

If approved, Amendment 1 would bar noncitizens from voting in Kentucky elections. Election officials, including Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams, told lawmakers this summer that the state already has safeguards in place to keep that from happening.?

During the 2024 legislative session, Howell’s bill was one of two proposing to amend the state constitution to specifically prevent noncitizens from voting in Kentucky elections. Rep. Michael Meredith, R-Oakland, introduced the other bill, which gained support in the House.?

Similar measures are on the ballot this fall in other states, including Idaho, Iowa, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Wisconsin. In Congress, House Republicans have sought to push a provision to bar noncitizens from voting in federal elections, which is already unlawful.?

Former President Donald Trump, the GOP nominee for president, has repeatedly falsely claimed that noncitizens voting are costing Republicans elections, a claim refuted by former Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson, a Republican, among many others.?

Noncitizens voting in elections across the country is rare. Some state officials in Texas, Ohio, Alabama and Georgia have flagged some noncitizens who have registered to vote or did vote in an election. Some local governments in California, Maryland, Vermont and the District of Columbia allow noncitizens to vote in their elections, such as for school board or city council.?

In an interview with the Lantern, Howell said if a local government in Kentucky allowed noncitizens to vote in a local election, “the administrative complexities associated with that, with our county clerks and secretary of state’s office, would be significant.”

“The reality of the situation — if a governmental entity decided to do this anywhere in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, a huge majority of our citizens would lose their minds over it, and I think rightly so,” the senator said.?

Anti-immigrant sentiments

Some have criticized measures like Kentucky’s Amendment 1 as a ploy to churn anti-immigrant sentiments among GOP base voters.?

Corey Shapiro, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, called it “an attempt to divide and fearmonger more than anything else” as federal law already prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections.?

Shapiro said the amendment will bring “additional attention to anybody who people think might not be a citizen” and could increase voter suppression among immigrants who have gained citizenship.?

“We’re seeing attacks on immigrants all across the country, and this is yet another attack, and it’s unfortunate because people who are registered to vote in Kentucky have probably one of the fewest opportunities to vote compared to other states, and instead of working to actually improve our election laws, make it easier for people to access the ballot, we are spending time and money talking about … made-up problems and casting doubt on the legitimacy of our elections,” Shapiro said.?

Kentucky has fewer days of early voting than most states. Voters also have fewer hours to get to the polls on Election Day in Kentucky, where polls are open from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., than in most states.?

Shapiro said giving Kentucky voters “more access to the ballot and more ability to vote … would be a much better use of our politics.”?

However, Howell said that he did not think the amendment could spur anti-immigrant sentiments among Kentuckians, but non-citizens voting in elections could.?

“Sometimes, it’s very controversial when a particular immigrant community expands within a community,” Howell said. “And I can see anti-immigrant sentiment being stirred up against that particular immigrant community if they were given the opportunity to vote for their mayor, or their school board where their children are educated, or something like that. To me, that has a much greater risk of anti-immigrant backlash than this constitutional amendment ever could.”?

The campaign for Amendment 1 has had a much lower profile than Amendment 2, which would give the General Assembly the ability to fund nonpublic schools if passed. Nine issue committees have registered with the Kentucky Registry of Election Finance to spend dollars to support or oppose Amendment 2, but none have filed to campaign on Amendment 1.?

House Democratic Caucus Chair Cherlynn Stevenson of Lexington said during a Kentucky Democratic Party press conference a couple of weeks ago that she does “absolutely believe that (Amendment 1) is probably on the ballot to help drive turnout” for the nonpublic schools amendment as voters who will support Amendment 1 will be encouraged to vote for Amendment 2.?

“It is a solution in search of a problem that doesn’t exist because noncitizens can already not vote,” Stevenson said.?

Howell said the amendments are “pretty mutually exclusive” as they deal with separate issues. He said he has not heard people talk about the amendments together.

José Pati?o, a 35-year-old DACA recipient and Arizona community organizer, says it took him a long time to overcome the fear of sharing his personal information — including his legal status — on social media. (Photo courtesy of José Pati?o)

For more than a decade, San-Francisco-based Miguel has been successfully filing renewals for his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status every two years, at least until 2024.

For some reason, this year, it took more than five months to get approval, during which his enrollment in the program lapsed, leaving him in a legal limbo.

He lost his work visa and was put on temporary unpaid leave for three months from the large professional services company where he’s worked for a decade.

“In those three months, I was trying to do a lot of damage control around getting an expedited process, reaching out to the ombudsman, congressmen — all of the escalation type of actions that I could do,” he said.

He was also being cautious about what he put in his social media and other online postings. Like many, he realized such information could put him at risk in an uncertain political environment around immigration.

“Given my current situation, I try not to brand myself as undocumented, or highlight it as the main component of my identity digitally,” Miguel said.

Miguel, who came to the United States at age 7 with his parents from the Philippines, says he was already mindful about his digital footprint before his DACA protections lapsed. His Facebook and Instagram accounts are set to private, and while amplifying the stories of immigrants is one of his goals, he tries to do so from an allyship perspective, rather than centering his own story.

While his DACA status has now been renewed — reinstating his work permit and protection from deportation — and Miguel is back at work, he’s taking extra precautions about what he posts online and how he’s perceived publicly. It’s the reason that States Newsroom is not using his full name for this story.

Miguel’s company is regulated by the SEC, and has to take a nonpartisan approach on political issues, he said, and that extends to employees. Staying neutral about political issues may be a common rule for many American workers, but it’s more complicated when an issue is a part of your core identity, Miguel said.

“I think that’s been a huge conflicting area in my professional journey,” he said. “It’s the separation and compartmentalization that I have to do to separate my identity — given that it is a very politicized experience — with my actual career and company affiliation.”

Digital footprints + surveillance

It’s not unusual for your digital footprint — the trail of information you create browsing the web or posting on social media — to have real-life ramifications. But if you’re an immigrant in the United States, one post, like or comment on social media could lead to an arrest, deportation or denial of citizenship.

In 2017, the Department of Homeland Security issued a notice saying it would begin tracking more information, including social media handles for temporary visa holders, immigrants and naturalized U.S. citizens in an electronic system. And Homeland Security would store that information.

But in recent years, there’s been more data collection. In 2019, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was found to have contracted with commercial data brokers like Thomson Reuters’ CLEAR, which has access to information in credit agencies, cellphone registries, social media posts, property records and internet chat rooms, among other sources.

Emails sent by ICE officials were included in a 2019 federal court filing, showing that information accessed via the CLEAR database was used in a 2018 deportation case, the Intercept reported. ICE agents used an address found in CLEAR, along with Facebook posts of family gatherings, to build a case against a man who had been deported from his home in Southern California and then returned. The man had been living in the U.S. since he was 1, worked as a roofer and had children who are U.S. citizens.

Ultimately, a Facebook post showing the man had “checked in” at a Southern California Home Depot in May 2018 led to his arrest. ICE agents monitored the page, waited for him to leave the store, then pulled him over. He was charged with felony illegal reentry.

Ray Ybarra Maldonado, an immigration and criminal attorney in Phoenix, said he’s seen more requests for social media handles in his immigration paperwork filings over the last few years. It can be nerve-wracking to think that the federal government will be combing through a client’s posts, he said, but clients have to remember that ultimately, anything put on the internet is for public consumption.

“We all think when we post something on social media that it’s for our friends, for our family,” Ybarra Maldonado said. “But people have to understand that whatever you put out there, it’s possible that you could be sitting in a room across from a government agent someday asking you a question about it.”

Ybarra Maldonado said he’s seen immigration processes where someone is appealing to the court that they are a moral, upstanding person, but there are screenshots of them from social media posing with guns or drugs.

Ybarra Maldonado suggests that people applying for citizenship or temporary protections consider keeping their social media pages private, and to only connect with people that they know. He also warns that people who share info about their legal status online can be the target of internet scams, as there’s always someone looking to exploit vulnerable populations.

But maintaining a digital footprint can also be a positive thing for his clients, Ybarra Maldonado said. Printouts from social media can provide evidence of the longevity of someone’s residence in the U.S., or show them as an active participant in their community. It’s also a major way that immigrants stay connected to their families and friends in other countries, and find community in the U.S.

Identifying yourself online

For José Pati?o, a 35-year-old DACA recipient, that goal of staying connected to his community was the reason he eventually began using his full name online.

When he was 6, Pati?o and his mother immigrated from Mexico to join his father in West Phoenix. From the beginning, he said, his parents explained his immigration status to him, and what that meant — he wasn’t eligible for certain things, and at any time, he could be separated from them. If he heard the words “la migra,” or immigration, he knew to find a safe place and hide.

In Pati?o’s neighborhood, he described, an ever-present feeling lingered that the many immigrants living there felt limited and needed to be careful. He realized he could work, but it would always be for less money, and he’d have to keep quiet about anything he didn’t agree with. Most people in his neighborhood didn’t use social media or didn’t identify themselves as “undocumented.”

“You don’t want your status to define your whole identity,” he said. “And it’s something that you don’t want a constant reminder that you have limitations and things that you can’t do.”

But like most millennials, when Pati?o went to college, he discovered that Facebook was the main way of communicating and organizing. He went “back and forth at least 100 times,” over signing up with the social media platform, and eventually made a profile with no identifying information. He used a nickname and didn’t have a profile photo. Eventually, though, he realized no one would accept his friend requests or let him into groups.

“And then little by little, as I became more attuned to actually being public, social media protected me more — my status — than being anonymous,” he said. “If people knew who I was, they would be able to figure out how to support me.”

Pati?o and others interviewed for this story acknowledged that the DACA program is temporary and could change with an incoming federal administration. In his first few months of his presidency in 2017, Donald Trump announced he was rescinding the program, though the Supreme Court later ruled it would stand.

That moment pushed Pati?o toward community organizing. He is now very much online as his full self, as he and his wife, Reyna Montoya, run Phoenix-based Aliento, which aims to bring healing practices to communities regardless of immigration status. The organization provides art and healing workshops, assists in grassroots organizing, and provides resources for undocumented students to get scholarships and navigate the federal student aid form.

Now, Pati?o said, he would have very personal conversations with anyone considering putting themselves and their status online. The community has gained a lot of positive? exposure and community from immigrants sharing their personal experiences, but it can take a toll, he said. His online presence is now an extension of the work he does at Aliento.

“Basically, I want to be the adult that my 17-, 18-year-old-self needed,” he said. “For me, that’s how I see social media. How can I use my personal social media to provide maybe some hope or some resources with individuals who are, right now, maybe seeing loss or are in the same situation that I was in?”

Tobore Oweh, a 34-year-old Nigerian immigrant who arrived in Maryland when she was 7, has spent the last decade talking about her status online. After she received DACA protections in 2012, she felt like it was a way to unburden some of the pressures of living life without full citizenship, and to find people going through similar things.

“That was like a form of liberation and freedom, because I felt like I was suppressing who I was, and it just felt like this heavy burden around immigration and just like, it’s just a culture to be silent or fear,” Oweh said. “And for me, sharing my story at that time was very important to me.”

She connected with others through UndocuBlack, a multi-generational network of current and former undocumented Black people that shares resources and tools for advocacy. Being open about your status isn’t for everyone, she said, but she’s a naturally bold and optimistic person.

She referred to herself as “DACA-mented,” saying she feels she has the privilege of some protection through the program but knows it’s not a long-term solution. She’s never felt “super safe,” but was uneasier through the Trump administration when he made moves to end the program.

“Everyone with DACA is definitely privileged, but you know, we all are still experiencing this unstable place of like, not knowing,” she said.

Since sharing more of her experiences online, Oweh said she feels a lot more opportunities and possibilities came into her life. Oweh moved to Los Angeles seven years ago and runs a floral business called The Petal Effect. She feels safe in California, as the state has programs to protect immigrants from discrimination through employment, education, small businesses and housing.

For Oweh, it was never a question of if she’d use social media, but rather how she would. She feels the accessibility to community and for sharing resources far outweighs the risks of being public about her status.

“Growing up, it wasn’t like what it is now. I feel like, you know, future generations, or you know, the people that are here now, like we have more access to community than I did growing up just off of social media,” Oweh said. “So it’s been instrumental in amplifying our voices and sharing our stories.”

Being vocal about your status isn’t right for everyone, Beleza Chan, director of development and communications for education-focused Immigrants Rising, told States Newsroom.

Social media, student organizing, protests and blogging led to the passing of the DREAM act and DACA in the last two decades, and those movements were essential to immigrants rights today. But those feelings of security come in waves, she said.

“I think the political climate certainly affects that,” Chan said. “…In the previous years, it was ‘undocumented and unafraid,’ and since Trump, it’s been like ‘you’re undocumented and you’re very afraid to speak up.’”

Texas National Guard soldiers stand on patrol near the bank of the Rio Grande on April 2, 2024 in El Paso, Texas.?A new study shows that undocumented immigrants paid nearly $100 billion in federal, state, and local tax revenue in 2022. The findings run counter to anti-immigrant rhetoric that immigrants who inter the U.S. illegally hurt social programs. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

A new study shows that undocumented immigrants paid nearly $100 billion in federal, state and local tax revenue in 2022 while many are shut out of the programs their taxes fund. The findings run counter to anti-immigrant rhetoric that undocumented immigrants are “destroying” social programs.

In 40 states, undocumented immigrants paid higher tax rates than the top 1% of the income scale in those states, according to a study released Tuesday from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning, nonprofit think tank.

The study, which uses estimates of undocumented immigrants’ tax contributions as of 2022, shows those totaled $96.7 billion that year. Study authors also found that undocumented immigrants would contribute $40.2 billion more per year in federal, state and local taxes if all of the undocumented population had access to work authorization. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy reasoned that this boost would come from higher wages associated with employment authorization and easier compliance with income tax laws.

The report also shed further light on the tax revenue provided by undocumented immigrants on the state and local level. Undocumented immigrants are paying 46% of their state and local tax payments through sales and excise taxes. Six states — New Jersey, New York, California, Florida, Texas, and Illinois — were able to raise more than $1 billion each in tax revenue from undocumented immigrants, the nonprofit said.

Undocumented immigrants pay property taxes and sales taxes, and federal payroll taxes taken from their wages, as well as income tax returns using Individual Taxpayer Identification numbers. Despite those payroll taxes funding Medicare, Social Security and Unemployment Insurance, undocumented immigrants are not eligible to enroll in and receive regular benefits from these social programs. They can also face barriers to getting tax refunds, including getting scammed by unscrupulous tax preparers who target immigrant communities, said Jackie Vimo, senior analyst of economic justice policy at the National Immigration Law Center in a media call on the report.

“There are tons of laws that prevent undocumented workers from getting benefits…” said Richard C. Auxier, a principal policy associate at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank that was not involved in the study. “…They get a lot of political attention. At the end of the day, they’re just normal people paying normal taxes.”

Alexis Tsoukalas, senior policy analyst at Florida Policy Institute, a nonprofit focused on economic mobility for Floridians, told reporters on Monday that she was struck by how much the state collected from undocumented immigrants in taxes compared to the wealthiest in the state. The current tax rate for undocumented immigrants in Florida is 8% compared to the top 1% of the state at 2.7%.

“This means hundreds of thousands of everyday people are contributing more than their share to public services they cannot even access meanwhile those with the most to give and the most to benefit contribute the least,” Tsoukalas said.

The study was released in the backdrop of a political climate where states have passed laws to arrest people who they suspect of entering the U.S. illegally, which has been a federal power,? the Biden administration announced an executive action to allow for the deportation of many asylum seekers without processing their claims, and the 2024 Republican Party platform promises the “largest deportation operation in American history” if former President Donald Trump is reelected over presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. Tax policy will also be front and center for Congress and the White House next year as provisions of Trump’s tax law, passed in 2017, are set to expire.

Aside from the human cost of deportations on families, policy experts and researchers are making the case that undocumented immigrants are a boon to the economy, making it an economic cost as well. Immigration and economic experts who spoke about the significance of the report on Monday highlighted the Congressional Budget Office’s July report on the rise in immigration and its effects on the economy and budget, which found that this increase in immigration would add $1.2 trillion in federal revenue from 2024 to 2034.

Carl Davis, research director at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, said there are economic ripple effects to consider in the deportation of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. beyond taxes.

“If you deported someone and they’re no longer making taxable purchases in their community, that number would reflect a reduction in their sales tax payments to the community but it wouldn’t capture that second ripple effect of the business has less profits because they have fewer customers,” Davis said in a media call on the study.

Auxier said that researchers have found children in an undocumented immigrant household are receiving education benefits that could be larger than the tax payments of the lower income working adults, but that this is more of an income issue than a specific immigration issue. The other side of that coin, Auxier notes, is that in the future, undocumented households may in fact give back more than they received.

“Those same studies tend to note that if the children go to school and they then go get jobs, now the American household is giving more than it got because the parents came here, worked, paid into Social Security, Medicare, and didn’t get any benefits,” he said. “The kid went to school and then they got a job and then they started earning enough money that they were a net contributor.”

Policy experts also pointed to a labor shortage — 8.1 million job openings and 6.8 million unemployed workers — as a reason to embrace the economic contributions of undocumented immigrants. South Dakota, North Dakota, Maryland, Vermont, Maine, and South Carolina are some of the states facing the greatest labor shortages, according to a Washington Post analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

“Immigrants are already filling that [labor] gap and if we have mass deportations where millions of immigrants are torn from their family members and the country they have made home, we will not only have the human impact of this but we’ll have a severe effect on the economy and available workforce,” said Vimo of the National Immigration Law Center, a group that focuses on racial, economic and social justice for low-income immigrants.

U.S. Capitol on March 14, 2024. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON ?— The U.S. House Thursday passed a Republican-led resolution condemning the president and Vice President Kamala Harris, the likely Democratic presidential nominee, for the administration’s immigration policies.

Republicans announced they would move forward with the resolution hours after President Joe Biden suspended his reelection campaign and threw his support to Harris to become the new Democratic nominee to face off with former President Donald Trump this November.

The resolution, H.R. 1371, was introduced Wednesday. It passed? 220-196 shortly before the House was due to leave for a six-week recess.

Six Democrats voted with Republicans: Reps. Yadira D. Caraveo of Colorado, Henry Cuellar of Texas, Don Davis of North Carolina, Jared Golden of Maine, Mary Peltola of Alaska and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington.

Immigration policy at the U.S.-Mexico border has remained a core campaign issue in the presidential elections and a top concern for voters.

Ahead of the vote, the White House Thursday put out a fact sheet pointing out that for the past seven weeks, encounters at the southern border have decreased by more than half, or 55%.

“While the President’s action has led to significant results, our nation’s immigration system requires Congressional action to provide needed resources and additional authorities,” the White House said.

‘Border czar’ label

Since Harris gained the necessary Democratic delegates to become the party’s likely nominee on Monday night, Republicans have criticized her for the Biden administration’s immigration policies and labeled her the “Border Czar,” inaccurately claiming it’s an official title given to her from the White House. It was also a title used in some media reports.

In March 2021, Biden tasked Harris with addressing the root causes of migration, in an effort to stem the flow of undocumented people at the southern border.

Harris was never given the title of “Border Czar,” but that title was officially given to Roberta Jacobson, the former U.S. ambassador to Mexico. Jacobson’s role was created for a short stint — Biden’s first 100 days in office — before ending in April 2021.

Additionally, U.S.-Mexico border security is tasked to the Department of Homeland Security. Republicans in February impeached DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over policy disagreements. The Senate dismissed the articles of impeachment in April.

Republicans said Harris and the administration are one and the same. “She owns all of his failed border policies,” House Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green of Tennessee said during debate? Thursday.

Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, said the resolution was “unserious,” and “nothing more than a campaign press release.”

“This resolution is only before this body because Vice President Kamala Harris will be the Democratic nominee for president,” Thompson said. “This resolution is incredibly petty.”

Republicans like Indiana Rep. Rudy Yakym and Florida Rep. Carlos Gimenez again referred to Harris as a “Border Czar” and blamed her for the high number of encounters at the southern border.

Gimenez also criticized Harris for not visiting the southern border frequently. She made one trip to El Paso, Texas, which is a border town, in June 2021, but that was due to her work addressing the root causes of migration leading to the border problems.

Task was narrower, Dems say

Democrats argued that Harris was given a diplomatic role rather than a border security role.

Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, said that Harris was never a “Border Czar.”

“She was narrowly tasked with developing agreements that could help bring government and private sector investments to those countries that are sending migrants to the United States, so that those countries could help strengthen the conditions in those countries,” she said.

The White House in March said that Harris had secured about $5 billion in commitments from the private sector to promote economic opportunities in the region and reduce violence in Northern Central America.

The chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Democratic Rep. Nanette Barragán of California, said that border security is the responsibility of Mayorkas and that Harris was never placed in charge of domestic immigration policy.

“Now they have a desperate resolution to blame Vice President Harris for the border,” she said of House Republicans.

Himlerville, circa 1920, was the coal camp for the Himler Coal company, a cooperatively owned mining operation in Martin County. Many of Himlerville’s original buildings still stand today. (George Gunnoe Papers, Marshall University)

For over 100 years, Himler House stood on a hill overlooking Beauty, formerly Himlerville, in Martin County. Once the site of grand Christmas parties and banquets, the house was eventually abandoned and fell to ruins.

But few of the teens, vandals, and ghost hunters who frequented the abandoned mansion knew that it had been the center of a unique and radical experiment in Appalachian history: a cooperatively owned coal mine.

The Himler Coal Company, founded in 1918, was owned and operated by a group of predominantly Hungarian miners. The founder of the company was Martin Himler, a Jewish Hungarian immigrant who had arrived in New York in 1907 with 13 cents in his pocket.

Over the course of his life Himler mined coal, published a popular Hungarian-language newspaper, owned a series of businesses, and worked for the Office of Strategic Services arresting and interrogating Nazis in post-war Europe. He was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2021.

Himler’s house in Beauty, Kentucky, was disassembled in 2022 because it was structurally unsafe. But the house is at the center of the Martin County Historical Society’s efforts to preserve Martin Himler’s legacy and revitalize the town of Beauty in the process.

Cathy Corbin is the director of the Himler Project, a group made up of a mix of local government, civic and educational institutions. The group formed in 2014 after the Himler family brought a manuscript of Martin’s unpublished autobiography to the Martin County Historical and Genealogical Society. Corbin, a former English teacher, agreed to edit the manuscript and prepare it for publication. It was through this process that Corbin came to understand Himler’s significance.

“We realized there was a lot more to Martin Himler than just being an immigrant who came to America and mined coal,” Corbin said in an interview with the Daily Yonder.

One of the primary goals of the Himler Project is to rebuild Himler House and restore it to how it looked in the 1920s, when it was the social center of a thriving coal camp. To that end, Corbin submitted an application to have Himler House designated as a National Historic Landmark. The application is currently being considered by the National Park Service.

“It would be a tremendous economic boost to Martin County to have Himler House designated as a United States National Landmark and possibly Himlerville itself as a historic district,” Corbin said.

Himler Coal

Beauty is one of many former company towns in Eastern Kentucky. But it is not an exaggeration to say its history is wholly unique in Appalachian history, according to Briane Turley, a professor of history at West Virginia University and co-founder of the Appalachian-Hungarian Heritage Project.

Appalachian coal camps were notoriously exploitative. Miners were forced to rent their homes from the company at exorbitant prices, and the company store — the only business in town — used their own currency known as “scrip.” Other expenses, from miners’ equipment and uniforms to their transportation, were taken directly from their wages, creating a system of indentured servitude.

Martin Himler experienced this system firsthand shortly after his arrival to the United States. Born to a Jewish family in a small town called Pászto, Himler immigrated alone at the age of 18. With no contacts or resources besides a distant cousin, he accepted “free transportation” from New York to Thacker, West Virginia, to work in coal mines there.

Upon his arrival, he was informed that he owed $32 (around $1,200 in today’s dollars) for the costs of transportation and equipment. Together with the cost of room and board, and because Himler was not a very good coal miner, he expected to go months without any wages. After only eight days working in the mine, he abandoned most of his belongings and “skipped,” running away on foot to find better circumstances elsewhere.

“It was a form of slavery, and Himler understood that,” Turley told the Daily Yonder. “And he literally had to slip away in the dead of night. Otherwise, they would arrest him, have him dragged back into the camp and force him to work until he paid everything off.”

Himler later worked in another mine in Pennsylvania, along with stints doing everything from shoe cobbling to show business. But this experience in West Virginia’s coal mines was the basis for the eventual founding and operating of Himler Coal as a cooperative in 1918.

During the coalfield labor disputes of the 1920s, Himler Coal sought a middle way between unfettered exploitative capitalism and bloody battles for unionization. According to Turley, Himler was able to create his cooperative because he was a well-known and trusted presence in the Hungarian mining community, which was one of the largest immigrant groups in Appalachia at the time. This was in part due to his weekly newspaper, Magyar Bányázslap (Hungarian Miners’ Journal) which was circulated among Hungarian coal miners nationwide.

“Because he had experienced the worst environments of coal mining in Appalachia before unionization, he knew how difficult the work was and how unfair labor practices were among the corporations that ran the mine,” Turley explained. “The mining companies were out for a lucrative, quick profit.”

In contrast, the miners themselves were shareholders of Himler Coal and sat on the company’s governing board, an arrangement unheard of in Appalachia or elsewhere. Himler himself never owned more than 3% of shares, according to Turley.

Himlerville

Himler Coal’s unique structure was also reflected in its company town, Himlerville. Unlike standard coal camps, Himlerville’s miners owned their own houses. Himler also did away with the oppressive “scrip” system at the company store.

“The company stores in most of Appalachia were terrorist organizations. You either purchased from them or you didn’t survive,” said Turley. “But there it was just one of many stores. You could go someplace else.”

Himlerville was known for its relative luxury. Each house had electricity and indoor plumbing, which was almost unheard of in Appalachian coal camps in those days.

In his autobiography, Himler writes that his personal objective in developing Himlerville was “to raise the standard of living of my people in every respect. My people were encouraged to live up to the standard in their modern and much-appreciated homes, and visiting Americans were astounded to see coal miners eating off white tablecloths and using white napkins.”

Himler also put great emphasis on education. The local school was soon rated the top school in the state of Kentucky. And because such a large percentage of miners and residents were Hungarian, the school was bilingual. Himler also considered Himlerville to be a great Americanization project and organized a night school to teach civics and prepare miners to become U.S. citizens.

According to the Himler House’s registration form for the National Register of Historic Houses, Himlerville was found to be the nation’s second most livable coal town by the U.S. Coal Commission.

“One of my miners told me that life on the camp would have been paradise were it not for the mine,” Himler wrote in his autobiography. “And he was right.”

Of course, Himlerville was not free from controversy. The Hungarian press was divided on Himler’s exploits – he was too conservative for the Left and far too radical for conservatives. Additionally, there was often tension between American-born Appalachians and Hungarian immigrants in Martin County. Linguistic and cultural differences played their part, as did nativism and negative stereotyping on both sides.

But like so many American utopian experiments, Himlerville would prove to be short-lived. After World War I, the coal industry fell into a depression. Supply continued to increase as mines got more efficient, but without the demand driven by the war, prices fell steeply. Like many coal companies in the 1920s, Himler Coal could not survive the downturn in the market and the company struggled financially. A devastating flood in 1928 marked the end of an era. Himler Coal went bankrupt and Himler and most of his miners left the town.

Preserving legacy

Today, nearly 30 original miners’ homes are still standing and in use in Beauty, along with the original Himler Coal company bank, powerhouse, railroad bridge, and Hungarian Cemetery.

Himler House was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1991, but the Martin County Historical Society is aiming to upgrade that status to a National Historic Landmark — a much rarer designation that indicates national significance. The Historical Society also hopes that the rest of Himlerville could eventually be declared a National Historic District. The National Historic Landmark application for Himler House is currently under review.

“Each of these sites are very important to Martin County and to Eastern Kentucky,” said Corbin. “If the house does receive National Landmark designation, this is a tremendous asset for this area of Appalachia, which has been hit hard by lack of coal mining.”

The Himler Project’s goals go beyond rebuilding and restoring the house itself. Celebrating Himlerville’s history and legacy has become an international affair, with Hungarian musicians and scholars participating in cultural and scholarly exchanges in Appalachia.

The Historical Society hopes to develop a museum, and potentially add a restaurant and event space to make the house into a destination for school field trips and tourism alike. Himler’s later work interrogating Nazis for the Office of Strategic Services makes him a local entry point for Holocaust history, a topic that is mandatory in Kentucky public schools. Some other ideas to generate tourist traffic include adding Beauty to a National Scenic Byway like the Coal Heritage Trail, or connecting it physically to a network of local hiking trails.

But historical preservation is never a cheap proposition, especially in the case of a house that has to be rebuilt from its foundations. Charlotte Anderson, president of the Martin County Historical and Genealogical Society, said funding is the biggest obstacle.

The project is estimated to cost nearly $1.9 million dollars, and in one of the poorest counties in Kentucky, that kind of funding is hard to come by. The Historical Society puts on a number of annual fundraisers, selling Polish sausages, sweets, and soup beans at various events.

“One of our board members is somewhat famous in our area for his soup beans, so that’s a big fundraiser for us. Now, when I say big, I mean a thousand dollars or so. That’s about as much as we get at any one time,” Anderson said. “It’s been a slow process, trying to come up with things in order to make the money to get at it.”

Jim Hamos is Martin Himler’s great-great-nephew, and one of several family members involved in the Himler Project. He worries that Beauty is too inaccessible to attract much out-of-state tourism.

“I don’t know how many people will make that sort of trek. It’s one thing when you’re off an interstate highway, but it’s another thing when you’re so remote” Hamos said in an interview with the Daily Yonder. “I find it really interesting. But how it becomes someplace where lots of people will go and pay money, I don’t know. But I’m hopeful.”

The National Parks Service lists tax incentives, access to grants, and assistance with preservation as some of the key benefits of National Historic Landmark status. Corbin is hopeful that such a designation will give the Himler Project the support they need to rebuild Himler House and manage the site as a tourist destination.

In the meantime, Hamos, who was himself a refugee during the Hungarian Revolution, takes inspiration from the lessons that can be learned from Himlerville.

“I’m thrilled that the people of Martin County want to do this. They’re trying to claim a piece of their history,” Hamos said. “I do believe this country is a family of immigrants. So I think that’s what we should be continuing to accept in this country.”

This story is republished from The Daily Yonder under a Creative Commons license.

Omar Toumbou of Maryland speaks at a press conference hosted by the Ohio Immigrant Alliance on the U.S. Capitol grounds Tuesday, June 11, 2024. (Photo by Lia Chien/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON – The Ohio Immigrant Alliance at a Tuesday press conference at the U.S. Capitol called on members of Congress to bring deported family members back home to the United States.

Present at the event were relatives of those deported asking for both Congress and President Joe Biden to reform the American immigration system and allow their loved ones to return, many of whom had lived in the U.S. for decades.

Lynn Tramonte, director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance, and Suma Setty, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Law and Social Policy, a D.C.-based nonprofit fighting for policy solutions for low-income groups, also launched their new?book, “Broken Hope: Deportation and the Road Home,” at the event.

“I just wanted to take a minute to ask you guys to think about what if somebody told you tomorrow, you had to walk away from everybody, and everything that you had built for 20 years?” said Tramonte. “That’s what deportation is. It’s an extreme consequence for a paperwork violation.”

Wafaa Hamdi, an Ohio resident, also spoke to the gathered crowd, flanked by her young niece and nephew at her side.

Her sister,?Tina Hamdi, of Dayton, Ohio, was deported in 2017 to Morocco, after serving a drug-related sentence that resulted from an abusive relationship, according to the National Immigrant Justice Center, a nonprofit that advocates for migrants and works with pro bono lawyers.

Tina came to the U.S. when she was 3 years old, and had resided under DACA status — a program for undocumented people brought to the United States as children — until her incarceration. She hasn’t seen her children in eight years, Wafaa Hamdi said.

“There’s a lot of kids, a lot of people in general, that have a loved one that they cannot see and that they used to go to sleep or wake up to every day and they no longer get to,” said Wafaa.

Tina’s son also spoke up. “I’m here because I miss my mom,” he tearfully said.

Longtime simmering issue

Deportation in the U.S. has been a contentious issue and top priority for presidents in recent decades.

Under President Barack Obama, average annual deportations?increased?by over 26,000 compared to the George W. Bush administration, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse of Syracuse University, a data research center.

When former President Donald Trump took office, deportations to Africa increased by 74 percent compared to the Obama administration, according to Tramonte and Setty. Trump also enacted several travel?bans?from primarily African and Muslim countries during his first year in office.

This year, TRAC?found?that deportations are up 50% under the Biden administration compared to the Trump administration levels in 2019, according to the publication Border Report. Many of these migrants had crossed the southern border.

Omar Toumbou, a Maryland resident, spoke to the effect historical Western colonization in Africa has had on deportations. Toumbou’s uncle, Abdoulaye Thiaw, was deported to Mauritania.

“Starting here with the will to want things to change will allow us to really start to break down these issues on a larger scale, to really understand what colonialism has truly done to the continent, and how it’s created such a broken, fractured structure to where countries don’t even have stabilization within their own governments,” said Toumbou.

Toumbou pointed to damaging effects of Western colonization, like political and economic instability, as the primary driver of Africans fleeing to the U.S. He said reformed immigration policies must take into account the systemic violence many Africans have fled.

“A lot of these things are a result of decades of neglect and also decades of blatant assault on Africa as a continent,” he said. “We need to change the way that we actually look at the continent as a whole.”

Central process advocated

The National Immigrant Justice Center launched its Chance to Come Home campaign in 2021. Its mission is for the Biden administration to establish a central process through the Department of Homeland Security for deported individuals to apply to return to America.

Biden signed a similar?order?in 2021 for deported veterans to apply to come back.

Democrats including Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, and Reps. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri, Adriano Espaillat of New York and David Trone of Maryland support NIJC’s campaign and?urged?Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to establish a central system.

Members of the Ohio delegation have also taken steps to protect those from Mauritania from deportation. Over half of Mauritanians coming to Ohio?settled?in Cincinnati.

In January, Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown and Reps. Mike Carey, Joyce Beatty, and Greg Landsman?introduced?the TPS for Mauritania Act of 2024 to grant Mauritanians in the U.S. Temporary Protected Status, which allows migrants to stay and work in the United States temporarily. Many other activist organizations?called?on President Biden last year to halt all deportations to Mauritania.

For now, several issues plague those facing deportation from the U.S.

Demba Ndiath, an Ohioan whose close family member was deported to Mauritania, said language barriers, inadequate translators, and a lack of financial services for legal services make it difficult for people to argue their case to stay.

Tramonte pushed for overall immigration court reform in the U.S. and called for support for NIJC’s Chance to Come Home campaign.

The Ohio Immigrant Alliance also planned to meet with the Ohio congressional delegation to push for immigration justice.

The stories of those far away were top of mind for everyone at Tuesday’s event. Ndiath reminded listeners that they were making a difference for their loved ones.

“I wish they could see everybody who’s here,” he said. “Standing up for them, meeting with members of Congress, advocating for them. I think we’re building hope for them.”

Voters line up outside a Takoma Park, Maryland, polling place. Takoma Park is one of 17 jurisdictions nationally that allow noncitizens to vote in local elections. (Jose Luis Magana/The Associated Press)

Preventing people who are not United States citizens from casting a ballot has reemerged as a focal point in the ongoing Republican drive to safeguard “election integrity,” even though noncitizens are rarely involved in voter fraud.

Ahead of November’s presidential election, congressional and state Republican lawmakers are aiming to keep noncitizens away from the polls. They’re using state constitutional amendments and new laws that require citizenship verification to vote. Noncitizens can vote in a handful of local elections in several states, but already are not allowed to vote in statewide or federal elections.

Some Republicans argue that preventing noncitizens from casting ballots — long a boogeyman in conservative politics — reduces the risk of fraud and increases confidence in American democracy. But even some on the right think these efforts are going too far, as they churn up anti-immigration sentiment and unsupported fears of widespread fraud, all to boost turnout among the GOP base.

While Republican congressional leaders want to require documentation proving U.S. citizenship when registering to vote in federal elections, voters in at least four states will decide on ballot measures in November that would amend their state constitutions to clarify that only U.S. citizens can vote in state and local elections.

Over the past six years, Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, North Dakota and Ohio have all amended their state constitutions.

In Kentucky — which along with Idaho, Iowa and Wisconsin is now considering a constitutional amendment — noncitizens voting will not be tolerated, said Republican state Sen. Damon Thayer, who voted in February to put the amendment on November’s ballot. Five Democrats between the two chambers backed the Republican-authored legislation, while 16 others dissented.

“There is a lot of concern here about the Biden administration’s open border policies,” Thayer, the majority floor leader, told Stateline. “People see it on the news every day, with groups of illegals pouring through the border. And they’re combined with concerns on election integrity.”

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson expressed similar concerns last month when he announced new legislation — despite an existing 1996 ban — that would make it illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections. During a trip to Florida to meet with former President Donald Trump, the Louisiana Republican said it’s common sense to require proof of citizenship.

“It could, if there are enough votes, affect the presidential election,” he said, standing in front of Trump in the presumptive presidential nominee’s Mar-a-Lago resort. “We cannot wait for widespread fraud to occur, especially when the threat of fraud is growing with every single illegal immigrant that crosses that border.”

That rhetoric is rooted in a fear about how the U.S. is changing demographically, becoming more diverse as the non-white population increases, said longtime Republican strategist Mike Madrid. Though this political strategy has worked to galvanize support among GOP voters in the past, he questions whether this will be effective politically in the long term.

“There’s no problem being solved here,” said Madrid, whose forthcoming book, “The Latino Century,” outlines the group’s growing voter participation. “This is all politics. It’s all about stoking fears and angering the base.”

Noncitizens are voting in some elections around the country, but not in a way that many might think.

Where noncitizens vote

In 16 cities and towns in California, Maryland and Vermont (along with the District of Columbia), noncitizens are allowed to vote in some local elections, such as for school board or city council. Voters in Santa Ana, California, will decide in November whether to allow noncitizens to vote in citywide elections.

In 2022, New York’s State Supreme Court struck down New York City’s 2021 ordinance that allowed noncitizens to vote in local elections, ruling it violated the state constitution. Proponents have argued that people, regardless of citizenship status, should be able to vote on local issues affecting their children and community.

During the first 150 years of the U.S., 40 states at various times permitted noncitizens to vote in elections. That came to a halt in the 1920s when nativism ramped up and states began making voting a privilege for only U.S. citizens.

The number of noncitizen voters has been relatively small, and those voters are never allowed to participate in statewide or national elections. Local election officials maintain separate voter lists to keep noncitizens out of statewide databases.

In Vermont’s local elections in March, 62 noncitizens voted in Burlington, 13 voted in Montpelier and 11 voted in Winooski, all accounting for a fraction of the total votes.

In Takoma Park, Maryland, of the 347 noncitizens who were registered to vote in 2017, just 72 cast a ballot, according to the latest data provided by the city. And in San Francisco, 36 noncitizens registered to vote in 2020 and 31 voted.

Voter turnout among noncitizens is low for two reasons, said Ron Hayduk, a professor of political science at San Francisco State University, who is one of the leading scholars in this area. Many noncitizens in these jurisdictions do not realize they have the right to vote, and many are afraid of deportation or legal issues, he said.

Registration forms in jurisdictions that allow noncitizens to vote in local elections do acknowledge the risks. In San Francisco, local election officials warn that the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement or other agencies could gain access to the city’s registration lists and advise residents to consult an immigration attorney before registering to vote.

“Immigrants were very excited about this new right to vote, they wanted to vote, but many of them did not ultimately register and vote because they were concerned,” Hayduk said.

While there are some noncitizens participating in a handful of local elections, they’re not participating illegally in any substantial way in state and national elections.

Though there’s room for legitimate debate about whether noncitizens should be allowed to vote at the local level, there is no widespread voter fraud among noncitizens nationally, said Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

In 2020, federal investigators charged 19 noncitizens for voting in North Carolina elections. A national database run by The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, shows that there have been fewer than 100 cases of voter fraud tied to noncitizens since 2002, according to a recent count by The Washington Post.

Trump continues to falsely assert that he was the rightful winner of the 2020 presidential election and that he had more of the popular vote in 2016. He has claimed without evidence that voter fraud was to blame, including in part from noncitizens.

With illegal immigration near the top of major issues for voters ahead of November, Trump and his movement sense they have momentum with the public to tie immigration concerns with their continued election claims, Olson said.

It’s a way of keeping Democrats on the back foot, by falsely accusing them of allowing immigrants to come into the country illegally so they can vote, he added.

“The imaginings that there is some sort of plot by an entire major political party is just remarkably evidence-free,” he said.

Fighting ‘the left’

Although voter fraud among noncitizens is not happening widely, states should still add protections to their voting systems to prevent that possibility, said Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican.

Kentucky Republicans and Democrats prepare to face off on ‘school choice’ amendment

Raffensperger has been a major proponent of a Peach State law that requires documentation to verify the citizenship status of voters. In 2022, he announced that an internal audit of Georgia’s voter rolls over the past 25 years found that 1,634 noncitizens had attempted to register to vote, but not a single one cast a ballot.

“I will continue to fight the left on this issue so that only American citizens decide American elections,” Raffensperger wrote in a statement to Stateline.

Meanwhile, lawmakers in Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina and West Virginia are actively considering legislation that would add ballot initiatives for November to prevent noncitizen voting. Those bills are at various points in the legislative process, with many having already passed one chamber.

During a committee hearing last week, Republican Missouri state Sen. Ben Brown said the state’s constitutional language is vague enough to allow cities to let noncitizens vote. While presenting his bill, he cited California’s parallel constitutional wording and how cities such as Oakland and San Francisco allow noncitizens to vote in local elections.

Most state constitutions have similar language around voter eligibility, saying that “every” U.S. citizen that is 18 or over can vote. The proposed amendments usually would change one word, emphasizing that “only” U.S. citizens can vote, eliminating an ambiguity in the text that has left room for cities in several states to allow noncitizen participation in elections.

It’s a “pretty simple” fix, said Jack Tomczak, vice president of outreach for Americans for Citizen Voting, a group that works with state lawmakers to amend their constitutions so that only citizens can vote in state and local elections.

“It does dilute the voice of citizens of this country,” Tomczak said. “And it also dilutes the nature of citizenship.”

This story is republished from Stateline, a sister publication to the Kentucky Lantern and part of the nonprofit States Newsroom network.

Concern over illegal immigration and border security was Donald Trump’s central campaign issue when he won the presidency in 2016, and polls show it as the GOP’s most potent political weapon again in 2024. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

With polls showing unauthorized immigration as Republicans’ best issue for the fall, the GOP is looking to raise the alarm about voting by non-citizens and the undocumented.

On the November ballot in Kentucky

Although Kentucky law already excludes noncitizens from registering to vote, Kentuckians will get a chance to enshrine the prohibition in the state Constitution in November.

The Republican-controlled legislature has put two amendments on the ballot, which also will include all the state House and half the Senate seats, as well as U.S. Congress, local offices and the race for U.S. president.

One amendment would end the constitutional ban on spending public money on private schools, paving the way for the legislature to approve charter schools and vouchers.

The other would specify: “No person who is not a citizen of the United States shall be allowed to vote in this state.”

The legislature also passed a bill requiring the Administrative Office of the Courts to send a list of people who were excused from jury duty because they’re not U.S. citizens to the attorney general, the United States attorney and the State Board of Elections. It instructs the elections board to remove anyone on the list from the voter rolls within five days. Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear vetoed the bill, citing another of its provisions.

Kentucky governors lack veto power over constitutional amendments, which require a three-fifths vote of the legislature.

The multi-pronged effort has been advanced in congressional legislation, public statements by top election officials and U.S. senators, plans produced by grassroots activists, and posts on X by former President Donald Trump and others.

Concern over illegal immigration and border security was Trump’s central campaign issue when he won the presidency in 2016, and polls show it as the GOP’s most potent political weapon again in 2024. A Feb. 27 Gallup poll found 28% of respondents saw it as the country’s most important issue, well ahead of any other topic.

At an April 2 rally in Michigan, Trump seized on the recent murder of a local woman, Ruby Garcia, who law enforcement has alleged was killed by her undocumented boyfriend.

“We threw him out of the country and crooked Joe Biden let him back in and let him stay and he viciously killed Ruby,” said Trump.

But the party is also using the issue to bolster its ongoing push to stoke fear about voter fraud and press for more restrictive voting rules. And it has often trafficked in false and misleading claims about voting by undocumented immigrants.

Voter fraud claims

Voting by non-citizens is extremely rare. That’s because, voting advocates say, non-citizens are especially careful not to do anything that might jeopardize their status in the country.

A voter fraud database run by the conservative Heritage Foundation, which covers several decades in which billions of votes have been cast across the country, contains 29 entries that mention non-citizens. In some of these, a non-citizen registered but did not vote.

Still, over the last few weeks, Republican secretaries of state from Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama, and at least two U.S. Senate Republicans, were the latest to tout the issue.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger wrote in a March 12 op-ed that “leftist-activist allies” of President Joe Biden “want to open the gate to non-citizen voting.”

At issue is a lawsuit challenging a Georgia measure requiring people registering to vote to show documentary proof of citizenship.

The voting-rights advocates behind the suit say the requirement isn’t needed, and can present a barrier to registration for some voters, especially naturalized citizens, who may not have easy access to citizenship documents.

In the op-ed, Raffensperger, who famously resisted Trump’s pressure to collude in subverting Georgia’s 2020 election results, sought to conflate the issue of illegal voting by the undocumented with burgeoning efforts by a few Democratic-led cities, including Washington, D.C., to allow legal non-citizens to vote in local elections.

He has pushed for a constitutional amendment in Georgia that would bar local governments in the state from enfranchising non-citizens.

“Leftist activists have already shown that they want to change the laws that require voters to be U.S. citizens,” Raffensperger wrote. “A constitutional amendment would eliminate any possibility for future efforts to change those laws.”

Warning on DOJ program

Days earlier, Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson sent a letter to the U.S. Justice Department, warning that a federal program aimed at making voter registration easier for people in the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service and the Bureau of Prison could lead to the registration not only of ineligible felons but also of the undocumented.

“Due to the Biden Administration’s border policies, millions of illegal aliens have not only been allowed into this country during the last three years, but they have also been allowed to stay. Many of these aliens have been in the custody of an agency of the Department of Justice including the Marshals,” Watson wrote in the letter, which his office provided to States Newsroom.

“Providing ineligible non-citizens with information on how to register to vote undoubtedly encourages them to illegally register to vote.”

The Justice Department program is part of the Biden administration’s response to the president’s sweeping 2021 executive order aimed at using federal government agencies to expand access to voter registration. Republicans have condemned the order as an improper attempt to use public resources to advance partisan political goals. There is no evidence the order has led to ineligible voters being added to the rolls.

Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen, as well as Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., also sought to raise concerns about non-citizen voting in an exchange at a March 12 hearing of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. The two Alabama Republicans charged that the federal government has denied election officials the tools they need to verify citizenship.

“I think (verifying citizenship) is important, now more than ever, especially given what’s happening at the southern border,” said Allen, who was testifying before the panel.

At the same hearing, Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, used his time to ask the witnesses if they agreed that only U.S. citizens should be able to vote in federal elections — something that’s already the law — and that people registering to vote should have to show proof of citizenship. Lee later sent out a clip of the exchange on X.?

Memo calls for proof of citizenship to register

Also last month, the conservative voting activist Cleta Mitchell, who played a key role in Trump’s bid to overturn the 2020 election, circulated a memo on “the threat of non-citizen voting in 2024.” The memo, posted online by a conservative advocacy group, called for a federal law requiring people to show proof of citizenship when registering, among other steps.

“There are myriad left-wing advocacy groups who register illegals to vote,” Mitchell wrote, a charge for which she did not provide evidence.

But the party’s efforts to tie together voting and immigration have been underway for longer in this election cycle. Last March, as States Newsroom reported, a group of prominent conservative election activists came together to promote what they called a national campaign to “protect voting at all levels of government as the exclusive right of citizens.”

Months later, congressional Republicans unveiled a sweeping elections bill, which aimed to capture the GOP’s top priorities in its push to tighten voting rules, and which contained a full section on stopping non-citizen voting.

Among other steps, the measure would give states more access to federal data on citizenship and make it easier for them to remove people flagged as non-citizens from the rolls. It also would penalize states where non-citizens can vote in local elections by cutting their share of federal election funding.

While Democrats control the Senate and White House, the bill has little chance of becoming law.

Legislation on non-citizen voting

Separately, in the current session of Congress alone, the House Administration Committee has passed seven different bills addressing non-citizen voting.

Last year, the House voted to use Congress’ authority over the District of Columbia to overturn D.C.’s law enfranchising non-citizens — the first time the House had voted to overturn a District bill since 2015. The Senate didn’t take up the bill.

One Republican lawmaker introduced a resolution calling for a constitutional amendment to ban non-citizen voting.

Legal non-citizen voting has a long history in the U.S. In the middle of the 19th century, at least 16 states passed measures enfranchising non-citizens, often to lure workers to underpopulated western states.

These laws were gradually repealed in the late 19th and early 20th century — a period when a more general anxiety about mass voting led to Jim Crow laws in the South and laws restricting voting by Catholic and Jewish immigrants in the north.

Some prominent figures have falsely suggested that Democrats are soft-pedaling border security so they can benefit from the votes of the undocumented.

“That’s why they are allowing these people to come in — people that don’t speak our language — they are signing them up to vote,” Trump said at a January rally in Iowa. “And I believe that’s why you are having millions of people pour into our country and it could very well affect the next election. That’s why they are doing it.”

Elon Musk, the billionaire tech entrepreneur, has taken a similar view.

“Dems won’t deport, because every illegal is a highly likely vote at some point,” Musk told his over 170 million followers in a Feb. 26 post on X, which he owns, commenting on news that an undocumented immigrant hadn’t been deported despite a string of arrests. “That simple incentive explains what seems to be insane behavior.”

U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, charged in a 2022 TV ad: “Joe Biden’s open border is killing Ohioans with more illegal drugs and more Democrat voters pouring into this country.”

Kansas law

One figure who may have done more than any to promote the threat of voting by non-citizens is Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach. As the state’s secretary of state, Kobach pushed for a law requiring voter registrants to provide proof of citizenship.

The law was ultimately struck down by a federal court, which found “no credible evidence” that a significant number of non-citizens had registered to vote before it was implemented. The law was responsible for keeping tens of thousands of voter registration applications in limbo during an election.

Kobach went on to chair a voter fraud commission created in 2017 by the Trump White House, which pushed for a federal law similar to the Kansas law. The panel disbanded the following year without providing evidence of widespread voter fraud.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers await the arrival of President Joe Biden to deliver remarks about immigration and border security at the Brownsville Station on February 29, 2024 in Olmito, Texas. The president visited the border near Brownsville on the same day as a dueling trip made by former President Donald Trump to neighboring Eagle Pass, Texas. (Photo by Cheney Orr/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump on Thursday afternoon paid competing visits to the nation’s southern border, where Biden called on Congress to reconsider a bipartisan border security deal that Republicans tanked at Trump’s direction.

Biden traveled to Brownsville, Texas, while Trump journeyed to Eagle Pass, highlighting how immigration policy has risen in importance as the 2024 presidential race takes shape. Biden is seeking reelection and Trump is the GOP primary front-runner.

“Here’s what I would say to Mr. Trump,” Biden said. “Instead of telling members of Congress to block this legislation, join me, or I’ll join you in telling the Congress to pass this bipartisan border security bill. We can do it together.”

Senate Republicans earlier this month walked away from that deal they brokered with the White House, following Trump’s objection to the plan that would drastically overhaul U.S. immigration law and bolster funding.

Biden said that the Senate needs to reconsider the bipartisan border security bill and that Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson should bring the measure to the floor for a vote.

Johnson has refused, arguing that the House already passed its own measure in H.R. 2, and that Biden has the executive authority to take action to address high levels of immigration. Democrats object to many of the policies in that bill.

Accompanying the president was U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who was impeached by House Republicans over policy disputes in early February, and Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, whose district includes Brownsville.

During his visit, Biden met with U.S. Border Patrol agents, law enforcement, frontline personnel and local leaders, the White House said.

“I just received a briefing from the Border Patrol at the border as well as immigration enforcement asylum officers and they’re all doing incredible work under really tough conditions,” Biden said. “They desperately need more resources.”

Mayorkas said only Congress can help DHS fund more Border Patrol agents, immigration enforcement agents, asylum officers, immigration judges and support personnel, facilities and technology.

“You can see the impact these resources will have on our ability to strengthen our security, advance our mission to protect the homeland and enforce our nation’s laws quickly and effectively,” he said. “Though Congress has not yet provided the resources we need, DHS will continue to enforce the law and work to secure our border.”

Migrant encounters

As the Biden administration deals with the largest number of migrant encounters at the southern border in more than 20 years, Trump’s reelection campaign has centered on stoking fears surrounding immigration — as he previously did in his 2016 presidential campaign.

More than 300 miles away from Biden in Eagle Pass on Thursday, Trump criticized the Biden administration and touted how he managed the border during his first presidency.

He highlighted his “Remain in Mexico” program that required asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while waiting for their asylum cases to he heard — a move that many advocates documented resulted in harm, separation and deaths to those migrants who had to comply.

“The best was ‘Remain in Mexico,’” Trump said. “You stay in Mexico.”

Trump implemented the program in 2019 and the Biden administration sought to terminate it in June 2021.

But the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas determined in Texas v. Biden that the termination memo from the Biden administration was not issued in compliance with the Administrative Procedure Act, so the court ordered the Department of Homeland Security to keep the program in place.

It took a Supreme Court ruling for the Biden administration to finally be allowed to end the program.

Trump also praised Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott, who is at odds with the Biden administration over who wields authority over the border, most recently when Abbott defied U.S. Supreme Court orders to remove razor wire along the border.

Abbott has also sent migrants on buses and planes to Democratic-led cities without warning local officials, putting strains on those cities.

“He’s in some sanitized location,” Abbott said of Biden’s visit to Brownsville. “It just goes to show that Biden does not care about either Texas or the border and what’s going on.”

GOP on the attack in D.C.

U.S. House Republicans at the Capitol also criticized Biden’s visit to the border, calling it a “photo op,” and arguing that Brownsville is not a busy area that encounters many migrants.

“The border is the issue for every American no matter where they live, no matter where their state is, because every state is a border state,” Johnson said during a Thursday press conference.

Johnson also pressed for Biden to take executive action on immigration, something Biden has argued he cannot do without congressional authority.

Utah’s Blake Moore, the vice chair of the House Republican Conference, argued that El Paso, Texas, and Tucson, Arizona, are? busier than Brownsville in terms of immigration.

“Brownsville can hardly be considered one of the most challenging immigration areas,” Moore said.

Moore said that this should not be just the second time in Biden’s presidency he has visited the border, and that Trump’s visit on the same day made it seem like Biden was trying to compete with Trump. Biden’s first visit to the border was in January 2023.

“That is what the American people will take from this, and it’s disheartening to know that that is the case,” Moore said.

NBC has reported the White House says Trump’s visit had nothing to do with Biden’s trip to Texas.

An immigrant family wades through the Rio Grande while crossing from Mexico into the United States on September 30, 2023, in Eagle Pass, Texas. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

Surrogates for President Joe Biden dismissed former President Donald Trump’s scheduled visit to the U.S.-Mexico border Thursday as a political stunt, adding that the likely Republican presidential nominee was exploiting an issue that he has shown no desire to fix.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia of California, both Democrats, told reporters on a Wednesday conference call organized by the Biden reelection campaign that Trump’s record — recently and throughout his public life — showed he was anything but serious about addressing the myriad issues resulting from a recent surge in migration across the southern border.

Trump is scheduled to visit the border town of Eagle Pass, Texas, on Thursday to call attention to Biden’s record on border security.

Biden separately will pay a visit to Brownsville, about 300 miles southeast of Eagle Pass.

Trump has no credibility on immigration after tanking a bipartisan agreement to strengthen border enforcement, Pritzker and Garcia said Wednesday.? Trump reportedly asked Republicans in Congress not to support the deal to avoid handing Biden a victory in an election year, they noted.

“Republicans frankly just do not care about solving the challenges facing this country,” Pritzker said. “They only care about saving their own skin. This could have been a press call touting a bipartisan path forward. Instead, Donald Trump wanted a campaign slogan.”

In a campaign statement Wednesday, Trump commended his own record on immigration, noting he signed executive orders calling for a wall on the southern border, declaring a national emergency on the border and sending police and military resources to the region.

Trump “created the most secure border in history,” the statement said, and would reinstate several policies that Biden dropped.

Trump would end a policy that allows migrants to live freely in a U.S. community as they await immigration hearings, cease birthright citizenship for the children of migrants in the country without legal authorization — even though an amendment to the U.S. Constitution is interpreted to guarantee that right — and use the military to combat drug cartels, the statement said.

Trump said in a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, on Saturday that he would seek to enact the “largest deportation in the history of our country” if elected.

“The first and most urgent action when we win will be the sealing of the border, stopping the invasion, drill baby drill, send Joe Biden’s illegal aliens back home,” Trump said. “We’ll do all of those things and we’re gonna have to do them fast because no country can sustain what’s happening in our country.”

Garcia, who immigrated to the country as a child, said Trump’s history of racist rhetoric showed he had misplaced priorities on immigration policy.

Trump has used what critics say are racist generalizations of immigrants since his entrance into national politics, a 2015 speech announcing his first White House run in which he made derogatory comments about immigrants from Mexico.

Trump believes “preying on immigrants is his path to reelection,” Garcia said.

“This is a cruel man with a cruel agenda,” he said.

Trump’s “extremism” on immigration would go even further than in his first term, Garcia said.

The former president has talked about returning to the family separation policy at the border, which attracted major controversy in his first term, has expressed support for ending birthright citizenship and said he would act as a dictator for the first day of a potential second term to enact extreme border policies, Garcia said.

Trump and other Republicans have harshly criticized the Biden administration’s approach to immigration, with House Republicans impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas this month over his supposed failure to enforce immigration laws.

Garcia called Trump’s approach to the issue “fearmongering.”

“Donald Trump doesn’t give a damn about border security,” he said. “All he cares about is stirring up pain, stirring up division.”

Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the fentanyl crisis on March 28, 2023. (Screenshot from Senate webcast)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate is expected to head to trial later this month after House Republicans impeached Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas Tuesday in a historic move against a sitting Cabinet member.

A special core set of impeachment rules that were last revised in the 1980s requires the body to consider resolutions containing impeachment articles that arrive from the House. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s office said Tuesday night the Democratic-controlled chamber will take action when it returns from recess on Feb. 26.

Senators will be sworn in as jurors the day after House impeachment managers deliver the articles of impeachment, Schumer’s office said, and Senate President Pro Tempore Patty Murray, a Washington state Democrat, will preside.

The House voted 214-213 to impeach Mayorkas on two articles of impeachment, on a second try after an earlier vote on Feb. 6 failed 214-216.

What does the Senate do first?

According to the rules currently on the books, the Senate must act in some way when the articles of impeachment are presented.

For example, senators can follow the already established rules, vote to make new rules or even take a procedural step to dispose of the impeachment resolution.

But just like the Senate’s regular standing rules, the body’s impeachment trial rules are not “self-enforcing.”

“That means that if the Senate doesn’t move to consider the impeachment resolution and have a trial, if they just ignore it, a senator could raise a point of order to enforce them and then the Senate would have a vote on that point of order to decide whether or not they were going to honor their rules,” said James Wallner, senior fellow at the R Street Institute and and political science lecturer at Clemson University in South Carolina.

“But if a senator didn’t raise a point of order, and they all just ignored it, then the Senate could just ignore the rules. Of course, in a situation like this, that’s unlikely to happen,” said Wallner, who writes a helpful blog on what happens inside the halls of Congress.

Wallner was the executive director of the Senate Steering Committee during the chairmanships of GOP Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and the now retired Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.

“The takeaway is … they have to act in some way,” Wallner said.

The House lawmakers appointed by Republicans as their impeachment managers for the Mayorkas trial include GOP Reps. Mark Green of Tennessee, Michael McCaul of Texas, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Clay Higgins of Louisiana, Ben Cline of Virginia, Michael Guest of Mississippi, Andrew Garbarino of New York, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, August Pfluger of Texas, Harriet Hageman of Wyoming and Laurel Lee of Florida.

What will the trial look like?

Schumer has already put to rest the question of the Senate’s initial steps on the articles of impeachment against Mayorkas.

However, because the core set of Senate impeachment rules leave a lot of unanswered questions, senators can chart their own course on the once rare but now more common impeachment trials — for example, how witnesses will be called, when motions are due, and so forth.

The body came up with specific supplementary rules for how to govern the 1999 impeachment trial of former President Bill Clinton, and for the two impeachment trials of former President Donald Trump, in 2019 and 2021, Wallner said.

As long as the Senate waits until the trial is formally underway, any supplementary rules can be adopted by a simple majority.

That will be key for the Democrats who only hold the majority by a slim margin in the upper chamber.

During the first Trump impeachment in 2019, Republicans in the Senate crafted “extremely detailed” rules for the trial, said Matt Glassman, a senior fellow at the Government Affairs Institute, a Georgetown University-run program that offers courses about congressional proceedings to executive branch personnel and others.

The Republican majority decided “when the House would file their motions, when Trump’s team would respond to them, what dates this would happen, what times would this happen, when arguments would happen for these things, and then how much time would there be for questions, how much time was presentations by the House managers and by Trump’s team,” he said.

“And so it very tightly structured the trial, right. And it did not actually leave a lot of room for senators to sort of freelance and make motions,” Glassman said.

“The Democrats tried to amend this, to allow fresh witnesses to be brought in to be deposed or questioned, right, because they wanted additional evidence brought to bear, and the Republicans blocked those amendments,” Glassman said.

The option for a motion to dismiss can be included in the supplementary rules as a way to “short circuit” the trial, Glassman said.

What are Senate Democrats saying?

While Senate Democrats have not yet decided on their supplementary trial rules, Schumer’s office released a statement Tuesday night calling the impeachment vote a “sham” and a “new low for House Republicans.”

“This sham impeachment effort is another embarrassment for House Republicans. The one and only reason for this impeachment is for Speaker Johnson to further appease Donald Trump,” Schumer said, referring to Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana.

As for a timeline, once the trial is underway the Senate’s core impeachment rules state that the chamber remains in session “from day to day … after the trial shall commence (unless otherwise ordered by the Senate) until final judgment shall be rendered.”

Glassman points out that the Senate “has routinely used unanimous consent to conduct all sorts of other business during impeachment trials.” The Senate can also structure its rules to make time for other legislative business, as needed, he adds.

A conviction in a Senate impeachment trial requires a two-thirds vote.

How rare is this?

The last Cabinet secretary to be impeached was Secretary of War William Belknap in 1876. The secretary, a former Iowa state legislator, was known for throwing lavish parties on a meager government salary and was eventually found out for his corrupt behavior, which involved taking kickbacks.

According to Senate records, Belknap relinquished his post just before the House voted to impeach him, which technically makes Mayorkas the first sitting Cabinet member to be impeached.

Despite Belknap’s exit, the Senate proceeded with a trial.

Belknap’s unique situation of no longer serving in government but being on trial in the Senate anyhow was a topic of discussion as the Senate in 2021 conducted its impeachment trial of Trump after he left office.

Circumstances aside, impeachment and Senate trials are overall rare, Wallner said.

“They’ve only impeached a handful of people in the House. They’ve only had trials for a handful of people in the Senate. It’s just this is a rare power to begin with,” Wallner said.

“… And I mean, I think to the extent that it is becoming more common today, I think that’s the more interesting story, not so much (that it’s happening) to a Cabinet official, but more to how we conduct our politics.”

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was impeached by the U.S. House on Feb. 13, 2024. Mayorkas is shown speaking to the media about an overview of public safety plans for Super Bowl week at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center on Feb. 7, 2024 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Candice Ward/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — In their second attempt in as many weeks, U.S. House Republicans impeached Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday, marking an inflection point in the growing rift between the GOP and the White House over immigration policy decisions at the southern border.

In a 214-213 vote, the House approved two articles of impeachment that charged Mayorkas with willfully ignoring immigration law and lying to Congress about the status of border security. It is only the second time in history that a Cabinet member has been impeached; William Belknap, the secretary of war and a former Iowa state legislator, was impeached in 1876.

A vote on the same resolution failed spectacularly last week, 214-216, while House GOP Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana was absent due to ongoing cancer treatments. Republican Blake Moore of Utah switched his vote from “yes” to “no” as a procedural move to allow the resolution to be reconsidered.

“House Republicans are far from done,” House Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green of Tennessee wrote on X before the Tuesday vote. “Secretary Mayorkas has sparked the worst border crisis in American history, and it’s long past time for him to be impeached.”

Green held several hearings on impeachment proceedings against Mayorkas.

All House Democrats present and three Republicans voted against the two articles of impeachment. Critics of the process have said a Cabinet official should not be impeached over what they say are policy disputes.

The Republicans who voted against impeachment were Reps. Ken Buck of Colorado, Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin and Tom McClintock of California.

President Joe Biden slammed House Republicans, calling the impeachment vote “petty political games.”

“Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas, a Cuban immigrant who came to the United States with his family as political refugees, has spent more than two decades serving America with integrity in a decorated career in law enforcement and public service,” Biden said.? “Instead of staging political stunts like this, Republicans with genuine concerns about the border should want Congress to deliver more border resources and stronger border security.”

Following the vote, Mia Ehrenberg, a spokesperson for DHS, said in a statement that “House Republicans will be remembered by history for trampling on the Constitution for political gain rather than working to solve the serious challenges at our border.”

The Senate will be required under the Constitution to hold an impeachment trial. Conviction would require a vote by two-thirds of that chamber.

According to the office of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House impeachment managers will present the articles of impeachment to the Senate when the chamber returns later this month. Senators will be sworn in as jurors in the trial the next day. Senate President Pro Tempore Patty Murray, a Washington state Democrat, will preside.

Immigration clash?

The impeachment effort, initiated by Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene, is perhaps the most high-profile example of the growing clash between Democrats and Republicans on how to handle an unprecedented number of migrants at the southern border.

Tensions have only increased after Senate Republicans tanked a bipartisan border security deal last week. The agreement would have significantly overhauled U.S. immigration law by creating a temporary procedure to shut down the border during active times and raising the bar for asylum claims.

The border security deal, which was tied to a $95 billion security package, died in the Senate after Republicans fell in line with GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump, who has centered his campaign on stoking fears about immigration at the southern border.

The global security package passed early Tuesday without the immigration deal.?

House Democrats have decried the efforts to impeach Mayorkas as political, while Republicans have argued that Mayorkas should be held accountable for what they have deemed a “crisis” at the southern border.

The first article of impeachment accuses Mayorkas of a “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law,” and the second accuses him of a breach of public trust by making false statements during congressional testimony, particularly citing statements by Mayorkas telling lawmakers the border is “secure.”

Two impeachment votes

Due to House Republicans’ razor-thin majority and absences last week, House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana could only afford to lose two votes during the first impeachment vote, on Feb. 6. Scalise was back in Washington on Tuesday, giving Republicans the margin they needed to overcome three members voting with Democrats.

The same GOP lawmakers who voted against the second impeachment also voted against the first — Buck, McClintock and Gallagher.

Gallagher, who was a key holdout in the effort to impeach Mayorkas, announced shortly after that he would not seek reelection.

In an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, Gallagher explained his vote against impeachment, expressing concern about the precedent it would set.

“Creating a new, lower standard for impeachment, one without any clear limiting principle, wouldn’t secure the border or hold President Biden accountable,” he wrote. “It would only further pry open the Pandora’s box of perpetual impeachment.”

The White House said in a statement last week that impeaching Mayorkas “would be an unprecedented and unconstitutional act of political retribution that would do nothing to solve the challenges our Nation faces in securing the border.”

Immigrant farm workers harvest broccoli on March 16, 2006, near the border town of near San Luis, south of Yuma, Arizona. The U.S. Senate rejected an immigration bill Wednesday after months of bipartisan negotiations. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Immigrant advocacy groups that opposed the bipartisan Senate deal to overhaul U.S. immigration law called for restarting policy discussions as the bill failed Wednesday in the U.S. Senate.

Several advocacy organizations opposed the deal, which was defeated in a 49-50 procedural Senate vote Wednesday after all but four Republicans declined to support it. Immigration advocates said the bill would have made unacceptable changes to the asylum system.

But those groups say there is still an opportunity to pursue an immigration overhaul, something Congress hasn’t done in nearly 40 years.

“This bill may be dead, but this issue (of immigration) is going to keep coming back because of the politics,” said Michele Garnett McKenzie, the deputy director for Advocates for Human Rights, a group based in Minnesota.

The deal, which a bipartisan trio of senators hashed out with the White House over four months, fell flat with Senate Republicans within days of its introduction.

Advocates criticized deal

The bill’s failure was expected –?and sought by – some immigration advocacy groups and Latino lawmakers, who criticized the White House and their fellow Democrats for giving up too much in negotiations.

Advocates said the bill included Trump-era policies and made concessions to asylum law.

“Senate leadership and the Biden administration are cowering to MAGA Republicans who are using immigrants as political pawns to grow their right-wing base,” Juliana Macedo do Nascimento, the deputy director of federal advocacy of United We Dream, said in a statement.

“As Democrats, we cannot accept Trump-era policies that hurt people, hurt our economy, and hurt the asylum process,” said Texas Rep. Greg Casar, a Democrat who is a member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

Casey Swegman, director of public policy at the Tahirih Justice Center in Falls Church, Virginia, said she was not surprised by the fate of the immigration deal.

She pointed to how the Congressional Hispanic Caucus was left out of talks, along with senators who had “a long history of working in good faith on compromise immigration reform.”

The three senators who brokered the deal were Sens. James Lankford, a Republican from Oklahoma, Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut and Kyrsten Sinema, an independent from Arizona.

“To be honest, advocates had very little hope that what came out of those negotiations would be any kind of starting point for us in terms of thinking about what is really needed to improve our immigration system, which we all accept needs work,” Swegman said.

The Tahirih Justice Center helps immigrants facing gender-based violence, which is why Swegman said the proposed changes to the credible fear standard in screenings for asylum seekers were so concerning.

“It is already very difficult for an asylum seeker who is pursuing a gender-based violence claim to gain asylum, even with a valid claim,” she said.

The proposal to raise the bar for a credible fear asylum screening from a “significant possibility” to a “reasonable possibility” is a higher bar that could mean “life or death for the people we are serving,” she said.

“When we think about the raising of this fear standard, while it can sound like splitting hairs to some people, it really is like slamming the door in the face for those with valid asylum claims that will not be given a chance or opportunity to make those claims,” she said.

Swegman said that the immigration deal did not reflect the reality at the southern border.

“It refuses to acknowledge the reality that we are living in a world now with increased conflict, increased instability and increased migration,” she said. “And what we see in this package are proposals that seem to deny that reality.”

McKenzie, with Advocates for Human Rights, said the U.S. policy of pouring money into enforcement doesn’t stem migration, it just makes it more dangerous.

“This has been 40 to 50 years of the same strategy of trying to mythically seal the border and enforce our way out and expel our way out of a very human condition, which is people move,” she said.

Accepting compromise

While many immigration advocacy groups voiced their opposition to the immigration deal in the Senate, others acknowledged that divided government, with Democrats in control of the Senate and Republicans holding a House majority, required compromise.

“Only Congress can change the law and in the current situation that means bipartisanship, that’s the only way that anything changes,” said Matthew Soerens, the vice president of advocacy and policy for World Relief, a Christian humanitarian organization based in Baltimore.

The difficulty of passing an immigration policy bill was apparent this week as Senate Republicans followed the lead of their House colleagues and the party’s presidential front-runner, former President Donald Trump, and opposed the deal.

Trump has made fears about immigration at the southern border his central campaign message. House Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise, both Republicans of Louisiana, said soon after the bill text was released that they would not allow a vote on the Senate proposal.

As an unprecedented number of migrants have arrived at the southern border, the issue has driven increased enmity among Republicans and Democrats.

Most recently, House Republicans failed Tuesday to pass a resolution to impeach U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over policy disputes.

After months of Senate Republicans insisting on tying together an immigration policy bill with a funding bill to provide aid and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine, Israel and Indo-Pacific partners, Senate leaders dropped the immigration provisions Wednesday following a failed vote on the full package.

That means Congress will take no immediate action to address the largest number of migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border in 20 years.

Needing a miracle

But Congress should not abandon the idea, Soerens said, adding there were some aspects of the immigration deal that he was pleased to see.

He cited the bill’s increase in visas for families and employment and a provision to create a pathway to residency for Afghan nationals who worked and helped the U.S. government, before Afghanistan fell to the Taliban following the U.S. withdrawal in 2021.

But he noted that the bill fell short in other areas, such as the lack of a pathway to citizenship for more than 800,000 people with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status. Those DACA recipients are often referred to as “Dreamers,” after the DREAM Act that Congress failed to pass in 2010.

President Joe Biden also expressed disappointment that the bill didn’t address Dreamers.

“One thing I am disappointed in we didn’t get done in the Senate’s piece was … the Dreamers,” Biden said Monday. “It’s ridiculous.”

Soerens said that he believes that most Americans want Congress to come together to fix the immigration system.

“I’m frustrated that the proposal was shut down so quickly,” he said.

He added that, as a Christian, he believes in miracles and acknowledged that it would take a miracle for Congress to pass immigration reform.

“We believe in resurrection,” Soerens said. “So this has been declared dead a few times, but we’re going to keep working on it.”

Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford speaks with reporters in the Russell office building in the Capitol complex in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2024.?(Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Republicans on Tuesday walked away from the bipartisan border security and immigration deal clinched after months of painstaking negotiations, siding with their House colleagues and presidential front-runner Donald Trump.

The decision to block the bill released just two days ago not only leaves laws in place that GOP lawmakers say have led to a “crisis” at the southern border, but drags on the stalemate over whether Congress will approve assistance for Ukraine and Israel, which was rolled into the package.

Republicans said months ago that the only way they’d support additional assistance for the two U.S. allies at war was if Democrats worked with them to “secure” the border.

But that requirement fell by the wayside this week after U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, and dozens of GOP lawmakers expressed opposition to the bill that was negotiated by a bipartisan trio of senators. Johnson instead pushed a standalone bill that provided aid only to Israel — and it was rejected on a Tuesday night vote. An attempt to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas also failed.

Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford, one of the three senators who spent months negotiating the immigration language in the measure released Sunday, said he believes there will be “significant” ramifications if the GOP completely walks away from the deal he helped write.

Lankford also expressed dismay that some of the lawmakers opposing the package don’t actually understand how the proposed changes in immigration law would work.

“I followed the instructions of my conference, who were insisting that we tackle this in October. It’s actually our side that wanted to tackle the border issue. We started it. But as I said earlier, things have changed over the last four months and it’s been made perfectly clear by the speaker that he wouldn’t take it up even if we sent it to him.” – Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell

“That’s the part that’s disappointing to me,” Lankford said. “If you’re going to disagree with it, disagree with it based on the facts of the bill, not something that’s actually factually not true.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday it’s obvious the full package cannot pass Congress and pressed for assistance to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan to move forward independently.

“There are other parts of this supplemental that are extremely important as well — Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan,” McConnell said. “We still, in my view, ought to tackle the rest of it because it’s important. Not that the border isn’t important, but we can’t get an outcome.”

The Kentucky Republican declined to comment if Trump was responsible for blocking the package after months of complex talks, saying that the situation has evolved.

“I followed the instructions of my conference, who were insisting that we tackle this in October,” McConnell said. “It’s actually our side that wanted to tackle the border issue. We started it.”

“But as I said earlier, things have changed over the last four months and it’s been made perfectly clear by the speaker that he wouldn’t take it up even if we sent it to him,” McConnell said. “And so I think that’s probably why most of our members think we ought to have opposition tomorrow … and then move on with the rest of the supplemental.”

The procedural vote on the package, which requires at least 60 senators to advance toward final passage, is scheduled for Wednesday.

Biden blames Trump

President Joe Biden on Tuesday expressed frustration that Republicans won’t support the immigration deal because of current GOP front-runner Trump, who is stoking fears of immigration as a central campaign message.

“Because Donald Trump thinks it’s bad for him politically,” Biden said. “Look, I understand the former president is desperately trying to stop this bill because he’s not interested in solving the border problem, he wants a political issue to run against me on.”

Biden warned that if the bill is not sent to his desk to be signed into law, “the American people are going to know why it failed.”

“Every day between now and November, the American people are going to know that the only reason the border is not secure is Donald Trump and his MAGA Republican friends,” Biden said.

Biden said that getting aid to Ukraine was critical, but declined to say he would support placing the immigration proposals into separate legislation to free up passage of the supplemental.

“We need it all,” Biden said.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said he’s willing to give GOP senators additional time to read through the bill and prepare amendments to the package.

But Schumer rebuked their decision to block the legislation from moving forward, saying Republicans are unwilling to resist Trump’s “bullying, even though they know he’s wrong.”

Schumer didn’t forecast whether he would advance a standalone aid bill for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan after Wednesday’s vote on the full package.

“We are going to vote on the bill tomorrow. The bill that’s before us. We’re going to move further forward. Stay tuned,” Schumer said.

Major changes in immigration law

The Senate deal brokered a significant overhaul of immigration law, such as raising the bar for migrants to claim asylum, creating a temporary procedure to shut down the border during active times and clarifying the president’s authority for humanitarian parole programs, among other changes.

Michigan Democratic Sen. Gary Peters, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said Republicans’ newfound opposition to the border security and immigration policy changes they wanted in the first place will “absolutely” impact voters’ thinking heading toward the November elections.

“This is a significant piece of legislation to deal with border security and Republicans are rejecting it,” Peters said. “And that will come back to haunt them.”

Turning their backs on the bipartisan compromise, Peters said, will have “big implications in all states, not just border states.”

Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, whom Democrats tapped to negotiate the immigration deal, said that it was “outrageous” that Republicans were dumping the supplemental package and immigration reforms “because Donald Trump asked them (to).”

“Republicans decided that they would be better off preserving chaos at the border, as an election issue, instead of solving the problem,” Murphy said.

“We reached a compromise that would actually fix the problem, and it turns out Republicans don’t want to fix the problem, they want to leave the issue of immigration open as a political agenda item to exploit.”

South Dakota Republican Sen. Mike Rounds said it was “disappointing” to him and many other GOP senators that Trump criticized the proposal in the way he did.

“There is no such thing as a perfect bill,” said Rounds, who said on X on Tuesday night he planned to oppose it.

“With the ability to actually offer amendments, a lot of us had hoped that we would get this to the point where it would be a better bill than what it would be today,” Rounds said. “And then we could move forward and hopefully the House might even consider it with some additional amendments on it. And that’s what our goal was.”

House votes on bill for standalone Israel aid

While McConnell now wants to see Congress move additional military and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan in the absence of a larger package, House Republican leaders had already put their own proposal on the floor.

Their bill, which was rejected on a 250-180 vote on Tuesday night, proposed $17.6 billion in aid for Israel as well as other American interests in the Middle East. It didn’t include emergency aid for any other countries.

Fourteen Republicans voted against the bill, while 46 Democrats voted for its passage.

House GOP leaders put the bill up for a vote under what’s known as suspension of the rules, a maneuver that requires a two-thirds vote for passage. That is why it didn’t pass, even though it had a majority of the votes.

The so-called suspension calendar is typically used for broadly bipartisan, noncontroversial bills, like renaming a post office. But House Republicans have increasingly used it to pass more consequential bills.

Legislation brought up under suspension of the rules is not subject to amendment.

House debate on the bill fell largely along partisan lines with Republicans arguing the Israel-only aid bill was the best way to help that country in its ongoing war against Hamas following the Oct. 7 attacks and Democrats saying Congress must strive to help other allies as well.

The Biden administration on Monday issued a veto threat against that bill, saying in a Statement of Administration Policy it “is another cynical political maneuver.”

“The security of Israel should be sacred, not a political game,” the Biden administration wrote.

“The Administration strongly opposes this ploy which does nothing to secure the border, does nothing to help the people of Ukraine defend themselves against Putin’s aggression, fails to support the security of American synagogues, mosques, and vulnerable places of worship, and denies humanitarian assistance to Palestinian civilians, the majority of whom are women and children.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wrote in a “Dear Colleague” letter that Democrats would not support the standalone legislation.

“Unfortunately, the standalone legislation introduced by House Republicans over the weekend, at the eleventh hour without notice or consultation, is not being offered in good faith,” he wrote.

“Rather, it is a nakedly obvious and cynical attempt by MAGA extremists to undermine the possibility of a comprehensive, bipartisan funding package that addresses America’s national security challenges in the Middle East, Ukraine, the Indo-Pacific region and throughout the world.”

An immigrant family wades through the Rio Grande while crossing from Mexico into the United States on Sept. 30, 2023 in Eagle Pass, Texas. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

FRANKFORT — Joining its House colleagues, the Kentucky Senate approved Tuesday its own resolution urging Gov. Andy Beshear to support Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s immigration crackdown at the Mexican border.?

Several Republicans spoke in favor of Resolution 123 before it was adopted by a voice vote. Democrats and GOP Sen. Whitney Westerfield, of Fruit Hill, expressed opposition to the resolution, calling it a “performative exercise” as it largely critiques only President Joe Biden rather than past administrations and the U.S. Congress.?

Kentucky Republicans lining up with Texas governor in border fight with Biden

“In no point of this resolution is there a condemnation of Congress after Congress after Congress after Congress after Congress who have ignored this problem, or worse … some are trying to save the problem due to the political liability for a candidate they don’t like,” said Westerfield, who is not running for reelection this November. “It’s an advantageous message for a candidate they do like, which is particularly cruel.”

Last week, the House adopted a similar resolution in a vote of 77-17.

Afterward, Beshear said Kentuckians are “exhausted with this constant ‘us-versus-them,’” and raised concerns that the GOP resolutions supporting Abbott “are based on a legal theory that was previously used to support secession.”

The Democratic governor also praised the 850 Kentucky National Guard members who have served at the southern border, saying they “answered the call of our country, not the clamor of the latest political outrage.”?

The Senate resolution’s primary sponsor, Harlan Republican Sen. Johnnie Turner, defended the need for the resolution by saying “there’s nothing more precious than your private right to private property” and Texans have that right. He added that he brought his wife to the U.S. and he “went through the process” after they met while he was serving in the military abroad.?

“What kind of nation are we if we don’t stand with Texas?” Turner asked his fellow senators.?

Sen. Cassie Chambers Armstong, D-Louisville, attempted to send the resolution to a committee for review before it was considered on the Senate floor but her motion failed after a voice vote. Turner had also sponsored Senate Concurrent Resolution 111, which used similar language to? his successful resolution. That had been assigned to the Senate State and Local Government Committee, but did not have a hearing before Tuesday.?

Senate Democratic Whip David Yates, of Louisville, said that as a member of his local city council, he saw resolutions forwarded to the General Assembly had little to no impact on lawmakers, and predicted the resolution would have a similar effect on the U.S. Congress.?

“This political play is divisive politics,” Yates said. “This is no good.”?

Resolutions like Kentucky’s have gained traction in other states. Ohio and West Virginia lawmakers passed their own versions within the past week.?Meanwhile in Washington, D.C., U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky, was initially among Senate Republicans working on a bipartisan border deal. However, he said the deal was dead Tuesday. The Republican presidential frontrunner, former President Donald Trump, had encouraged Republicans to abandon the deal so he can run on immigration issues in his reelection campaign.

Razor wire is seen on the banks of the Rio Grande at Shelby Park on Jan. 12, 2024 in Eagle Pass, Texas. The bipartisan deal to overhaul U.S. immigration policy announced Sunday was met with fierce opposition in the U.S. Senate Monday. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The proposed global security funding legislation that includes major bipartisan updates to immigration policy encountered opposition from members of both parties Monday, especially Republicans upset by the Biden administration’s handling of border security, charting a tumultuous path for passage in the Senate this week.

The deal on immigration policy, negotiated for months by a bipartisan trio of senators, aims to stem migration at the Southern border. It spurred bipartisan ire in both chambers after its introduction Sunday night as some Republicans said it would not force the Biden administration to take more action and some Democrats argued it would undermine the asylum system.

U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the campaign arm for Senate Republicans, blamed the Biden administration for rolling back Trump-era immigration policies.

“President Biden could have secured the border on Day One of his presidency and chose not to and the disastrous results speak for themselves,” the Montana Republican said in a statement.

President Joe Biden told reporters Monday that the bill would give him tools he needed to control the border.

His critics call the border “out of control,” he said.

“Well guess what? Everything in that bipartisan bill gives me control, gives us control,” he said during a campaign stop in Las Vegas.

The bill “still meets the needs” of people seeking to immigrate legally, he added.

The bill’s supporters, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, urged critics to accept the deal.

“This bipartisan agreement is not perfect, but given all the dangers facing America, it is the comprehensive package our country needs right now,” Schumer, a Democrat of New York, said on the Senate floor Monday.

A procedural vote is set for Wednesday, which Schumer called “the most important (vote) that the Senate has taken in a very long time.”

Even though Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, support the immigration deal and the $118.28 billion supplemental package to aid Ukraine, Israel, Indo-Pacific region and U.S. border security, many senators are expressing their displeasure after the nearly 400-page bill was released late Sunday.

The immigration deal was negotiated by the White House and Sens. James Lankford, a Republican from Oklahoma, Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, and Kyrsten Sinema, an independent from Arizona.

Changes would include raising the bar for migrants to claim asylum, creating a temporary procedure to shut down the border at particularly active times and an end to the practice of allowing migrants to live in the United States while they wait for their cases to be heard by an immigration judge, among other policies.

“Our immigration laws have been weak for years,” Lankford said in a statement Sunday. “This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to close our open border and give future administrations the effective tools they need to stop the border chaos and protect our nation.”

The Senate will consider the immigration overhaul and global aid package as a single bill after Senate Republicans insisted on tying the supplemental aid package for policy changes at the Southern border.

Many Senate Republicans reject deal

Several Republican senators came out against the package, less than 24 hours after it was introduced.

On X, formerly known as Twitter, Republican Sens. Mike Braun of Indiana, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Ted Budd of North Carolina, Mike Lee of Utah, Marco Rubio and Rick Scott of Florida, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Roger Marshall of Kansas and J.D. Vance of Ohio already said they will not vote for the package.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee called to instead pass a hard-right immigration bill the House passed last year known as H.R. 2. That bill would resume the construction of a barrier along the Southern border and reestablish Trump-era immigration policies.

Republican Sen. Deb Fischer of Nebraska said in a statement that she would not support the bill because it “falls short” of securing the border.

In a Fox News appearance Monday, GOP Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin expressed displeasure at the immigration bill, which he said “appears even worse than we feared.”

Alabama’s GOP Sen. Katie Britt said in a statement that she is not supportive of the bill because of the president’s current immigration policies at the Southern border.

“At every step along the way, President Biden has made it clear that he doesn’t want to end the border crisis – he wants to enable it,” she said. “Ultimately, this bill would not effectively block President Biden from executing that very agenda, and I won’t support it.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, is pushing for a process to add amendments “to try to improve the bill,” he said in a statement. He added that if amendments are not allowed, then “the bill will die because of process.”

“Like many others, I am open-minded on steps we can take to make the bill stronger,” Graham said. “That can only come through the amendment process.”

Even Maine’s Sen. Susan Collins, a moderate in the Senate Republican Caucus, did not indicate whether she would support the package.

In a statement, Collins, the top Republican on the Senate Committee on Appropriations, said she was pleased that her provisions to speed up work permits for migrants were included in the immigration section of the supplemental package.

The union that represents about 18,000 U.S. Border Patrol agents has endorsed the bill.

Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, said the bill’s enforcement provisions “will give U.S. Border Patrol agents authorities codified, in law, that we have not had in the past.”

“While not perfect, the Border Act of 2024 is a step in the right direction and is far better than the current status quo,” Judd said.

Latino Democrats also object

Adding to the bill’s detractors, two Latino Democratic senators voiced opposition to the bill Monday. They argued it contains many hard-right policies reminiscent of the Trump administration and does not include a pathway to citizenship for undocumented people brought into the country as children, often referred to as Dreamers.

“Major chunks of this legislation read like an enforcement wish list from the Trump administration, and directly clash with the most basic tenets of our asylum system,” New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez said in a statement.

California’s Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla said he strongly supported the bill’s foreign military and humanitarian aid funding, “but not at the expense of dismantling our asylum system while ultimately failing to alleviate the challenges at our border.”

The global security supplemental includes $60 billion to support Ukraine in its war against Russia; $14.1 billion in assistance for Israel; and $10 billion in humanitarian assistance “to provide food, water, shelter, medical care, and other essential services to civilians in Gaza and the West Bank, Ukraine, and other populations caught in conflict zones across the globe,” according to a summary.

Outlook worse in House

House Republicans, who hold a slim majority in that chamber, have already thrown cold water on the package.

Hours after the bill was released, House Speaker Mike Johnson wrote on X that the Senate bill is “dead on arrival” in the House.

Rep. Mark Green of Tennessee, chair of the House Homeland Security Committee who moved articles of impeachment for Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, said in a statement that he will “vehemently oppose any agreement that legitimizes or normalizes any level of illegal immigration.”

“I’ve seen enough,” the Louisiana Republican said. “This bill is even worse than we expected, and won’t come close to ending the border catastrophe the President has created.”

A vote on the House floor for the impeachment of Mayorkas, which is driven by House Republicans’ disagreement over policies at the Southern border, could come as early as Wednesday.

U.S. senators announced a bipartisan agreement Sunday on changes to federal immigration law as part of a supplemental funding bill. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Sunday night released a $118.28 billion global security package that includes a long-anticipated overhaul of immigration law negotiated by a bipartisan trio of senators.

“The United States and our allies are facing multiple, complex and, in places, coordinated challenges from adversaries who seek to disrupt democracy and expand authoritarian influence around the globe,” Schumer, a New York Democrat, said, explaining the need for U.S. aid for Ukraine, Israel and others.

The nearly 400-page package also includes sweeping bipartisan immigration legislation that would:

• Raise the bar for migrants claiming asylum;
• ?Clarify the White House’s use of parole authority to temporarily grant protections to migrants;
• Create a procedure to shut down the border at particularly active times;
• And end the practice of allowing migrants to live in the United States while they wait for their cases to be heard by an immigration judge.

Senate Republicans had insisted that the changes in immigration policy accompany the global aid package.

For security, the measure includes $60 billion to support Ukraine in its war against Russia and $14.1 billion in assistance for Israel. It also has $10 billion in humanitarian assistance “to provide food, water, shelter, medical care, and other essential services to civilians in Gaza and the West Bank, Ukraine, and other populations caught in conflict zones across the globe,” according to a summary.

“Failing to pass this supplemental, and failing to support Ukraine is nothing short of throwing in the towel to Putin,” Senate Appropriations Chair Patty Murray, a Washington state Democrat, said on a call with reporters.

The immigration provisions, negotiated by the White House and Sens. James Lankford, a Republican from Oklahoma, Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, and Kyrsten Sinema, an independent from Arizona, would be the biggest changes to immigration law in nearly 40 years if enacted — although a tough path is ahead in both the Senate and House.

Following the release of the bill, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, a Louisiana Republican, wrote on X that the Senate’s bill will not “receive a vote in the House.” He argued that some of the provisions will be “a magnet for more illegal immigration.”

The bill makes changes to credible fear of persecution standards for asylum and for the expedited removal of those asylum seekers who don’t qualify. There would be $3.99 billion provided for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to hire 4,338 asylum officers.

Schumer said the deal the three senators worked on for four months “is a real opportunity for Congress to address our borders and make progress towards a more efficient and well-resourced system.”

“This agreement improves an adjudication system that has been underfunded for decades by hiring more frontline personnel, asylum officers, and creating new processes to provide faster and fair decisions,” Schumer said.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in a statement blamed President Joe Biden for “an unprecedented crisis” at the Southern border and said the legislation would force the president to enforce immigration laws. The Kentucky Republican also praised the new emergency tools.

“I am grateful to Senator Lankford for working tirelessly to ensure that supplemental national security legislation begins with direct and immediate solutions to the crisis at our southern border,” McConnell said.

Border funding

The package includes $20.23 billion to “address existing operational needs and expand capabilities at our nation’s borders, resource the new border policies included in the package, and help stop the flow of fentanyl and other narcotics,” according to a summary from Murray’s office.

Murray said on the call with reporters Sunday evening that “there’s no reason for drama, delay, or partisanship.”

While the Senate language is bipartisan, U.S. House Republicans, including Speaker Mike Johnson, have said new immigration legislation is not necessary and blame Biden for not enforcing current law. Several House members strongly criticized the measure after it was released Sunday, previewing a difficult path in that chamber.

The legislation would prohibit additional U.S. funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, following allegations from Israel that several of its staffers participated in the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

The Biden administration has paused funding for UNRWA while the investigation is ongoing, but many, including McConnell have called for a full cutoff in U.S. aid.

McConnell said in late January on the Senate floor that Republicans “will not accept any legislation that allows taxpayer dollars to fund UNRWA.”

Option to shut down the border

The legislation would give the secretary of Homeland Security the option to shut down the border if, during a period of seven consecutive days, there are more than 4,000 encounters recorded with migrants. If that number reaches 5,000 encounters for a period of seven consecutive days, the U.S. would be required to shut down the border.

The only way the border would be shut down within one day is if there is a combined total of 8,500 migrants encountered, according to the bill text.

Sinema said during a Sunday morning interview on the CBS show “Face the Nation that the proposed policy would be a “powerful tool.”

That tool would be known as a border emergency authority and is temporary and would sunset within three years, according to the bill text. Some exceptions to that authority include unaccompanied minors and victims of human trafficking.

“The reason we’re doing that is because we want to be able to shut down the system when it gets overloaded, so we have enough time to process those asylum claims,” Sinema said.

The secretary of Homeland Security could remove that emergency authority in no later than 14 days, if there are seven consecutive days during which the number of migrant encounters that initially sparked that emergency authority goes down to 75% of encounter levels.

Votes on the way

Votes in the Senate could come as early as Wednesday for the package. Enacting it into law will be an uphill battle, even though Biden has committed to supporting the deal, as his administration contends with the largest number of migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border in 20 years.

“There is more work to be done to get it over the finish line,” Biden said in a statement on Sunday night. “But I want to be clear about something: If you believe, as I do, that we must secure the border now, doing nothing is not an option.”

House Republicans have fallen in line behind former President Donald J. Trump’s opposition to an agreement. Trump’s GOP-leading 2024 presidential campaign has used fears of immigration at the southern border as a central theme.

Johnson, a Republican of Louisiana, has argued that Biden has the authority to make immigration policy changes, and does not need Congress to take action.

The release of the immigration bill text and global aid package accompanies a drive by House Republicans to impeach U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over what critics say are policy differences, but it’s unclear if the GOP’s razor-thin majority will prevail. A vote is expected in the coming week.

Johnson has a slim two-vote majority, and even if Mayorkas is impeached, the Democratic-controlled Senate likely would acquit the secretary, meaning he would not be removed.

In a statement, Mayorkas said that the changes do “not fix everything in our immigration system,” but are an important step.

“This agreement builds on this Administration’s approach of strengthened consequences for those who cross the border unlawfully, without curtailing the development of lawful, safe, and orderly pathways for those who qualify,” he said.

“While it will take time to fully implement these new measures, the new enforcement tools and resources this proposal offers will further strengthen our ability to enforce the law in the months and years ahead, and we will begin implementing them as soon as it becomes law,” Mayorkas said.

Sinema says no more ‘catch and release’

Sinema said the bill would end the policy of allowing migrants who are detained to live in U.S. communities while they await having their asylum cases heard by an immigration judge, known colloquially as “catch and release.”

Instead of that practice, Sinema said those migrants would be taken to a short-term detention center, where a quick asylum interview would determine whether that migrant meets the asylum requirements or should be swiftly removed.

Sinema said that those migrants who cannot be detained, such as families, would have a three-month asylum review.

“For folks that we can’t detain, like families, for instance, (we) will ensure that we’re supervising them over the course of just three months and conduct that interview with that new higher standard, requiring them to show more proof early on about whether or not they qualify for asylum and to return them to their country if they do not have the evidence or the proof that they qualify for asylum,” Sinema said.

She added that those who do qualify for asylum will be on a rapid path for approval, within about six months.

Immigration court backlog

There currently is a backlog of more than 3.2 million cases in immigration court, pending under roughly 600 immigration judges, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC, which compiles immigration data.

Many migrants have initial court dates set years in the future. The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service has estimated that an additional 700 — so 1,349 total — immigration judges would need to be hired in order for the backlog of immigration courts to be cleared by fiscal year 2032.

To help with court backlogs, the bill provides the Executive Office for Immigration Review with $440 million to hire immigration judges and support staff.

The bill provides U.S. Customs and Border Protection with $6.7 billion, and out of that, $723 million to hire additional border patrol officers and for overtime pay.

The bill includes a provision of the bipartisan Afghan Adjustment Act that would create a pathway to residency for Afghan nationals who worked and helped the U.S. government before Afghanistan fell to the Taliban following the U.S. withdrawal in 2021.

About 76,000 Afghans were placed through a humanitarian parole program, granting them temporary protections but leaving them in legal limbo.

?Jennifer Shutt and Jacob Fischler contributed to this report.

This story has been updated with details on the legislation and statements from lawmakers, including Sens. McConnell and Murray ?and House Majority Leader Scalise.

James Lankford (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — A U.S. Senate vote is expected next week on a bipartisan deal that would overhaul U.S. immigration law and provide more than $100 billion for a global security package.

The long-awaited bill text on the supplemental package to aid Ukraine, Israel, the Indo-Pacific region and U.S. border security could be made public as early as Friday or as late as Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Thursday.

He said he plans a procedural motion on Monday, “leading to the first vote on the national security supplemental no later than Wednesday.”

The immigration deal has faced two big problems: funding and former president Donald Trump.

Republican lead negotiator James Lankford of Oklahoma said work on the bill is in its final stages, which negotiators have said repeatedly.

“It’s all the technical aspects… it’s check, re-check,” Lankford told reporters at the Capitol. “It’s the frustrating season, though. Tomorrow (is) Groundhog Day. It feels like it’s today.” He was referring to the 1993 movie starring Bill Murray in which a weatherman is forced to relive Groundhog Day over and over in a time loop.

Problems remain with cost and campaign politics. “Our policy deal is done,” lead Democratic negotiator Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut said. “But it requires the bill to fund the changes that Republicans asked for, and if you support this deal, then you need to support the funding necessary to get it done.”

Murphy declined to comment on cost estimates for the legislation that would make changes to U.S. asylum law and enforcement at the U.S.-Mexico border.

He added that he’s “increasingly worried” that Senate Republicans will walk away from the deal because of outside pressure from Trump, the current GOP front-runner, who wants to quash it in order to continue stoking immigration fears as part of his 2024 presidential campaign platform.

“Republicans are talking about walking away from it just because Donald Trump doesn’t like it — that’s ridiculous,” Murphy said.

Trump continues attacks

Schumer said on the Senate floor that as negotiators make progress, the “louder voices get on the outside who want to kill these negotiations in their tracks.”

“There are always going to be some who prefer to exploit the issue of the border instead of fixing it, so the real question is whether senators can tune all that noise out and focus on reaching an agreement,” he said.

During a meeting with the Teamsters Union in Washington, D.C. Wednesday, Trump again said he is opposed to the immigration deal in the Senate.

“You don’t need a deal to tighten up the border and to make it secure,” he said. “I don’t think you’re gonna get a great bill.”

Trump added that if Republicans vote for the legislation, he thinks “they’re making a terrible mistake.”

Biden pushing for deal

President Joe Biden publicly committed in mid-January to sign into law the Senate bipartisan deal that Sens. Lankford, Murphy and Kyrsten Sinema, independent of Arizona, have worked on for four months.

Some of the proposed immigration policy changes include curbing the Biden administration’s use of parole authority, which the administration has heavily relied on to grant temporary protections to migrants by allowing them to live and work in the United States without visas.

Another would be to raise the bar for migrants to claim asylum, as well as expedited removal proceedings. Murphy noted, “That doesn’t happen for free.”

“That’s just the reality that if you want to stand up and do emergency power at the border, you have to fund it,” he said. “If you want to dramatically shorten the asylum processing time, you have to fund it.”

Not up to Congress, Johnson says

The Republican-led House, including Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana, has been less receptive to agreeing to the Senate’s bipartisan deal, before the bill text is even released.

On Wednesday, in Johnson’s first speech as speaker on the House floor, he stated that action on U.S. immigration law was up to Biden, not Congress, while also advocating for changes on the southern border.

“President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas have designed this catastrophe,” Johnson said, referring to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who is the current subject of an impeachment drive by House Republicans.

“And now, rather than accept any accountability or responsibility for what they have clearly done, President Biden wants to somehow shift the blame to Congress.”

Tensions between Texas and the federal government have also risen since the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the Lone Star State to remove razor wire fencing along the Texas-Mexico border. Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott has defied those orders, and Republicans, including Johnson, have backed his decision.

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, along with 14 GOP governors, are heading to Texas this weekend to tour the southern border. The governors will also hold a press conference to protest the Biden administration’s border policies.

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana?Republican, gives his first floor speech since being elected to the leadership role.?(Screenshot from U.S. House livestream)

WASHINGTON — U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday used his first floor speech since taking hold of the gavel more than three months ago to call for immediate action to address undocumented immigration and border security, saying it’s a “moral” responsibility.

The Louisiana Republican, however, argued the task should fall to the White House, not Congress.

“While there may be some who think that it’s not a good time to act, I disagree,” Johnson said. “Good policy — like a strong border and securing our nation and defending our sovereignty — is always good politics.”

“It’s the right thing to do, it’s the moral thing, it’s the constitutional thing to do, it’s the common sense thing to do,” Johnson added. “I cannot for the life of me understand why the president won’t agree with that.”

Former President Donald Trump, the front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination, repeatedly has urged Republicans in Congress to end negotiations on any bipartisan immigration deal, though so far senators attempting to strike a deal have continued their work.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said Wednesday afternoon that negotiators were “close” to reaching a deal.

Johnson, during his 30-minute speech on the House floor, called the volume of undocumented immigrants entering the country a “crisis” before picking apart ongoing bipartisan negotiations in the Senate, where lawmakers have been working for months to find agreement on changes to immigration and border policy.

Johnson repeatedly called on President Joe Biden to use executive authority to reduce the number of undocumented immigrants entering the country by reinstating Trump-era policies.

Migrants claiming asylum and seeking to enter the United States should have to remain in Mexico until their hearing, he said.

The Department of Homeland Security, which includes Customs and Border Protection as well as Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, has essentially become a shuttle service for the drug cartels, Johnson said.

“The Department of Homeland Security has effectively become a taxi driver to just help traffickers complete the last few miles of their human smuggling operation,” Johnson said. “It’s all absolute madness and it is dismantling the safety of our communities.”

But still, Johnson said the crisis must be addressed through the president’s executive authority, not Congress’ lawmaking powers.

“President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas have designed this catastrophe,” Johnson said, referring to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the subject of an impeachment drive by House Republicans. “And now, rather than accept any accountability or responsibility for what they have clearly done, President Biden wants to somehow shift the blame to Congress.”

The situation, he said, is “absolutely laughable.”

Johnson — who has elicited frustration from several Republican colleagues who do believe Congress has a role to play in immigration policy — said Biden must take executive action if he wants House Republicans to possibly move to the negotiating table.

“My counter is this, if President Biden wants us to believe he’s serious about protecting national security, he needs to demonstrate good faith and take immediate action to secure that border,” Johnson said. “If he wants our House Republican Conference to view him as a good faith negotiator, he can start with the stroke of a pen, but he’s got to do it quickly.”

The U.S. House could vote as soon as next week on the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas after a panel voted early Wednesday to approve two articles of impeachment. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security early Wednesday voted 18-15 along party lines to send articles of impeachment against Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the House floor.?Republicans argue the charges are legitimate.

Members of the full House could vote as soon as next week to impeach Mayorkas, who is engaged with members of the Senate and the White House in finalizing a deal to overhaul immigration laws. Republicans, including the GOP front-runner in the race for the presidency, Donald Trump, have made clear immigration will be a central issue in the 2024 elections.

If the articles of impeachment are brought to the House floor for a vote and passed, it will be the first time in U.S. history that a Cabinet official is impeached due to what Democrats said are policy differences rather than alleged misconduct.

Even if the Republican House, with its slim majority, manages to impeach Mayorkas, the Democrat-controlled Senate will likely acquit him. This means, in the end, Mayorkas probably will not be removed from office.

“This is not about policy differences at all,” House Homeland Security Chair Mark Green, a Tennessee Republican, said in his opening statement at the committee markup. “This goes far deeper. Secretary Mayorkas has put his political preferences above following the law.”

Mayorkas sent a letter to Green Tuesday before the markup, defending his record, and pushed back on House Republicans’ claims that he has not enforced immigration law.

“We have provided Congress and your committee with hours of testimony, thousands of documents, hundreds of briefings, and much more information that demonstrates quite clearly how we are enforcing the law,” Mayorkas wrote.

After a more than 15-hour meeting that initially started Tuesday morning, the committee passed two articles of impeachment, accusing Mayorkas of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” It will be up to House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana to call for a House vote.

Democrats submitted nine amendments, and none were adopted.

Two articles of impeachment

The first article of impeachment against Mayorkas is for a “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law” by not following court orders or laws passed by Congress, with the result an unprecedented number of migrants at the southern border.

The second article of impeachment cites Mayorkas for a breach of public trust by making false statements and obstructing oversight efforts at DHS by the Office of Inspector General, the agency’s internal watchdog.

The top Democrat on the committee, Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, said that those two articles of impeachment do not reach the standards of “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

“In a process akin to throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks, Republicans have cooked up vague, unprecedented grounds to impeach Secretary Mayorkas,” Thompson said in his opening statement.

Articles of impeachment have also historically gone through the House Judiciary Committee, Thompson added.

Green held two hearings this month on impeachment proceedings without Mayorkas as a witness. In the most recent hearing, Mayorkas was invited but could not attend due to a scheduling conflict, as he was meeting with officials from Mexico about migration issues.

Officials at DHS have called the markup “political games,” and noted that Mayorkas has testified 27 times before Congress, “more than any other Cabinet member.”

Democrats lambasted the markup as a “sham” and argued that Republicans were moving forward with impeachment as a way to campaign on immigration.

Thompson said that Republicans should instead agree to pass the bipartisan deal that the Senate is working on. No bill text has been released of that deal, and Johnson has not publicly supported it, or indicated that he will bring it for a vote in the House.

Press conferences

Leading up to the markup, Republicans and Democrats held dueling press conferences Monday.

Democrats, including Thompson and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, called the move to impeach Mayorkas “illegitimate,” and said that a Cabinet official cannot be impeached over policy differences.

Republicans, made up of mostly the Texas delegation, threw their support behind Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott, who is defying orders from the U.S. Supreme Court and the White House to remove razor wire fencing along the Texas-Mexico border.

Those Republicans repeatedly told Biden to leave the Lone Star State alone, and that they would move forward with impeaching Mayorkas.

“I think the voters are going to continue into November by calling this what it is. It is an invasion. It is the most egregious breach of our national security in the history of this country,” Texas GOP Rep. August Pfluger, who also sits on the House Homeland Security Committee, said.

GOP cites Supreme Court decision

Republicans focused on a recent Supreme Court decision, United States vs. Texas, to justify the move to impeach Mayorkas. In that case, Texas and Louisiana challenged new DHS immigration enforcement guidelines that prioritized the arrest and removal of certain noncitizens.

The conservative court voted 8-1 and found that the two states lacked standing. Republicans cite the lone dissent of that case from Justice Samuel Alito as part of their arguments for congressional authority to remove Mayorkas.

Alito said that “even though the federal courts lack Article III jurisdiction over this suit, other forums remain open for examining the Executive Branch’s enforcement policies. For example, Congress possesses an array of tools to analyze and influence those policies [and] those are political checks for the political process.”

Georgia’s Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, along with other Republicans, argued that one of those tools is the ability to impeach and said that the Supreme Court decision “left the House of Representatives with little choice.”

“The only one (tool) that makes sense in the current political environment is impeachment,” Greene said.

Maryland’s Democratic Rep. Glenn Ivey said that tools that Congress possesses for policy are “oversight, appropriations, the legislative process and Senate confirmations and through elections,” not impeachment.

Rep. Josh Brecheen, an Oklahoma Republican, said he felt it was dangerous for the executive branch to pick and choose which policies to follow.

“To allow the executive (branch) on how to enforce it or what to enforce, you’ve granted them the ability to become a king,” Brecheen said.

Ivey agreed there is no monarchy in the United States.

“We don’t have kings, we have elections and we have three branches of government,” he said.

‘Thin on constitutional grounds’

Democrats defended Mayorkas and argued that the articles of impeachment did not rise to the high bar needed.

Rhode Island Democratic Rep. Seth Magaziner said that the grounds for impeachment are treason, bribery or high crimes and misdemeanors, and he argued that Republicans have not made that case for Mayorkas.

“The case here is so thin on constitutional grounds that it’s laughable,” he said.

The first article of impeachment that cites laws Mayorkas did not follow includes detention and removal requirements under the Immigration and Nationality Act, such as the requirement for expedited removals.

Exceptions to expedited removal include credible fears on the part of migrants and claims of asylum. In 2021, Biden directed DHS to review those noncitizens who were subject to expedited removal and a year later the agency rescinded the expansion of expedited removal under the Trump administration, citing limited resources.

The first article of impeachment also cites Mayorkas’ use of parole authority, which allows migrants temporary protections without a visa. The executive branch has had this authority since the 1950s, but federal courts are currently reviewing the range of that parole authority.

The Biden administration has created temporary protections for certain nationals who qualify to allow them to temporarily work and reside in the country. Some migrants who are eligible for parole are from Afghanistan, Ukraine, Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, among others.

The first article of impeachment argues that because of those policies, Mayorkas is responsible for the unprecedented number of migrants. For the 2024 fiscal year, which started Oct. 1, there have been more than 785,000 migrant encounters at the border, according to recent DHS data.

The articles also accuse Mayorkas of being responsible for the strain on cities that are struggling to care for migrants such as New York City. Abbott has placed migrants on buses and planes and sent them to mainly Democratic-run cities without alerting local officials.

The first article of impeachment also blamed Mayorkas for profits made by smuggling operations, backlogs of asylum cases in immigration courts, fentanyl-related deaths and migrant children found working in dangerous jobs. Republican state legislatures have moved to roll back child labor laws in industries from the food industry to roofing.

Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee introduced an amendment to eliminate the first article of impeachment.

It failed on a 15-18 party-line vote.

Another amendment by Democratic Rep. Lou Correa of California eliminated the second article of impeachment.

It also failed on a 15-18 party-line vote.

The second article of impeachment argues Mayorkas has breached public trust by making several statements in congressional testimony that Republicans argue are false.

“Mr. Mayorkas lied to Congress,” Green said.

They cited statements by Mayorkas telling lawmakers the border is “secure,” and saying that the Afghans placed into the humanitarian parole program were properly vetted following the Taliban takeover of the country after the U.S. evacuated.

The second article of impeachment said that another false statement Mayorkas made was about a 2021 image of U.S. Border Patrol agents on horseback with whips as Haitian migrants were running away.

Mayorkas said he was “horrified” by the image and would immediately investigate.

An internal report found that the agents did not whip the migrants but used excessive force.

The second article of impeachment also charges Mayorkas with not fulfilling his statutory duty by rolling back Trump-era policies such as terminating contracts that would have continued construction of the border wall and ending the Migrant Protection Protocols, also known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy.

“If he is changing the policies of the Trump administration, that means it’s a policy decision, not a violation of the law,” Democrat of New York Dan Goldman said.

Goldman was the lead counsel for the first impeachment inquiry of Trump when he was president.

Remain in Mexico policy

Florida GOP Rep. Laurel Lee said that Mayorkas was ordered to reinstate the remain in Mexico policy and failed to do so. Mayorkas was not ordered to reinstate the 2019 Trump-era policy.

In a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court upheld in 2022 that the Biden administration had the authority to end the remain in Mexico policy.

The remain in Mexico policy required asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases were heard in immigration court. Many immigration advocates argued this left migrants in dangerous situations.

“He’s come to this Congress and he’s given testimony before that was demonstrably false, stating that our border was secure, stating that he had operational control of the border when in fact, every person in this room, and I dare say the vast majority of America, knows that is not the truth,” Lee said.

Democrats accused Republicans of wanting to campaign on immigration rather than fixing the problem.

“The real reason we are here, as we all know, is because Donald Trump wants to run on immigration for his number one issue in the November 2024 election,” Goldman said.

Democratic Rep. Troy Carter of Louisiana said impeaching Mayorkas would set a dangerous precedent.

“So the slippery slope of ‘just because we can’ is a dangerous one,” he said. “You have no evidence to support why a person is impeached.”

Republican Carlos Gimenez of Florida said impeaching Mayorkas was not about politics and that the Biden administration is “using policy to mask unlawful behavior.”

Democratic Rep. Dina Titus of Nevada said the markup was a “political stunt.”

“I think another saying that appropriately describes what’s going on here, and that’s just shoveling the same old sh-t and calling it sugar,” she said.

Reps. Richard Heath, R-Mayfield, and Rebecca Raymer, R-Morgantown, prepare to present a resolution in support of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to the House State Government Committee. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Jamie Lucke)

FRANKFORT — Responding to Republican calls for him to support Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s immigration crackdown, Gov. Andy Beshear on Tuesday praised the 850 Kentucky National Guard members who have served at the southern border, saying they?“answered the call of our country, not the clamor of the latest political outrage.”?

Declaring Kentuckians “exhausted with this constant ‘us-versus-them,’” Beshear also raised concerns that GOP resolutions supporting Abbott “are based on a legal theory that was previously used to support secession.”

Republican lawmakers have introduced resolutions in both Kentucky chambers calling on Beshear to voice support for his Republican counterpart in Texas who has blocked the U.S. Border Patrol from entering an area in Eagle Pass, Texas. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the Biden administration has the authority to remove razor wire that was installed under Abbott’s orders.

Kentucky Republicans lining up with Texas governor in border fight with Biden

Around the country, Republican governors, attorneys general and lawmakers are intensifying their criticism of Democratic President Joe Biden’s handling of the border at the same time former President Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination, is trying to kill a bipartisan agreement being negotiated in the U.S. Senate that would link tougher immigration laws and aid to Ukraine.?

Abbott and his supporters assert ?the federal government under Biden “has broken the compact with the states,” the so-called “nullification” doctrine that states used to justify seceding from the United States and starting the Civil War.

A surge of immigrants traveling through Mexico from around the world and seeking asylum in the U.S. has strained the Border Patrol, the capacities of cities to shelter migrants and an immigration system that has gone decades without reform by Congress.

A House committee on Tuesday voted 15-3 to advance a resolution urging Beshear to support Abbott in his efforts to stop what Republicans called an “invasion” of migrants and a threat to Kentucky.

A few hours later, the House approved Rep. Richard Heath’s House Resolution 57, by a 77-17 vote.

In committee, Rep. Rebecca Raymer, R-Morgantown, one of HR 57’s sponsors, said “this is not political theater, this is a true sincere urging” of Beshear to “state support” for Texas.?

Rep. David Hale, chairman of the State Government Committee, said Kentuckians are contacting lawmakers urging them to “do something to support the state of Texas.” Hale also stressed the resolution would not have the force of law.

Hale said Abbott “has the backbone to stand up and say I want to do something about this. And the Biden administration does nothing about it” while Beshear, Hale said, sits “on the sidelines.”

Beshear issued this statement: “Throughout my time as Attorney General and Governor, I have always avoided pick-a-side politics, and in the last election, the people of Kentucky showed they are exhausted with this constant ‘us-versus-them.’?

“I answered the call under both Presidents Trump and Biden, and Kentucky has sent nearly 850 National Guard members to the southern border. In doing so, we answered the call of our country, not the clamor of the latest political outrage.

“Last year, I thanked our soldiers for their service at the border and awarded them the Governor’s Outstanding Unit Citation. Finally, I have concerns that today’s resolutions are based on a legal theory that was previously used to support secession. I am a proud American who will always support our one nation under God.”?

This story has been updated with the House vote.

Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman (Kentucky Lantern photo by Mathew Mueller)

FRANKFORT — The controversy over control of the U.S. border has invaded the Kentucky Capitol as Attorney General Russell Coleman and other Republicans voice solidarity with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in his showdown with the Biden administration.?

Coleman joined 25 other Republican attorneys general on Monday in sending a letter to President Joe Biden similar to one sent earlier by Republican governors.

The attorneys general say in their letter that the Biden administration “??is doing more than impeding Texas’s attempts to enforce the law” and has helped “individuals complete their illegal entry into the United States.” Like Abbott, Coleman and the Republican AGs characterize the wave of asylum seekers as an “invasion.”

Meanwhile, a Kentucky House committee will hold a special meeting Tuesday to consider a resolution — one of several filed by lawmakers — urging Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear to support Abbott’s efforts in “securing the Texas border.” Abbott has blocked U.S. Border Patrol access to part of the border with Mexico.?

Republican criticism of Biden’s border policies is intensifying as Republicans in the U.S. Senate say they are nearing a deal with the administration that links immigration reform and heightened border security with aid to Ukraine. Former President Donald Trump is opposing the negotiations. Observes say Trump, the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination, wants to preserve immigration as a campaign issue against Biden.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, an ardent supporter of continued support for Ukraine in its war with Russia, acknowledged last week in a closed door meeting of Senate Republicans the difficulty of passing an immigration deal over Trump’s opposition. But Republican supporters of the deal have vowed to keep negotiating, saying the border security agreement would be stronger than any deal Republicans can realistically expect from Congress in the future.?

GOP Sen. James Lankford, one of the immigration deal’s lead negotiators, was denounced over the weekend by some Oklahoma Republicans in an action that has divided his state’s party. The U.S. House is moving to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.?

Coleman, a former McConnell staffer, last week issued a statement on social media saying Kentucky stands with Texas in its “right to self defense on the Southern Border.”?

After Coleman’s statement online, three other Republicans in the executive branch —?Secretary of State Michael Adams, Treasurer Mark Metcalf and Agriculture Commissioner Jonathan Shell —?expressed support for Texas.?

In an apparent response, Beshear, from his personal account on X, formerly Twitter, posted a photo of a groundbreaking ceremony and said: “While others are playing politics, we’ve been out creating jobs for Kentucky.” Beshear then said that Kentucky’s National Guard “has been serving at our southern border for years.”

“They also have been deployed in the Middle East and in Europe,” Beshear added. “We continue to support our Guard in all they do.”

The U.S. Supreme Court issued a 5-4 ruling on Jan. 22, allowing U.S. Border Patrol agents to remove razor wire set up under Abbott’s orders.?

Texas authorities on Jan. 10 had fenced off a 2.5-mile area with razor wire and effectively blocked the U.S. Border Patrol from a stretch of border in Eagle Pass used by migrants to cross into this country from Mexico.

Two days later, an immigrant woman and two children drowned while trying to cross the Rio Grande at Eagle Pass. When U.S. Border Patrol agents went to investigate the reported drownings they were barred from the area by Texas National Guard members. Texas officials, including Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton, are still refusing to open the area to federal Border Patrol agents.?

By asserting that the federal government under Biden “has broken the compact with the states,” Abbott and GOP attorneys general are invoking the “nullification” doctrine that Southern states used to justify seceding from the United States in 1861 and igniting the Civil War.?

Coleman said in a public statement Monday: “President Biden’s failed open border policy gives drug cartels and criminals a free pass to pour their deadly poison into our country. As a result, Kentucky has become a border state, and our children are at risk. The crisis at the southern border demands a strong response, and I am proud to stand with Governor Abbott in defending the people of Texas.”?

In an additional statement to the Lantern, Coleman reiterated his criticism of Biden. “I don’t know what might pass this Congress, but I do know that President Biden can’t keep sitting on his hands and ignoring the crisis at our border.”

House Resolution 57, sponsored by Rep. Richard Heath, R-Mayfield, will be heard in a special-called meeting of the House State Government Committee Tuesday. Mirror legislation, Senate Concurrent Resolution 111, is sponsored by Sen. Johnnie Turner, R-Harlan.?

Heath told the Kentucky Lantern he was unaware of the Senate resolution after he filed his. He added that he hoped Beshear “would see the need for standing with Texas.”

Rep. Savannah Maddox, R-Dry Ridge, also filed House Resolution 63 Monday to show “Kentucky’s support for Texas’ fight against Joe Biden’s Open Borders.”? Maddox’s resolution calls on Biden to “bring home American National Guardsmen and women from undeclared wars so that they may be committed to defending the United States’ southern border.”

Immigration reform by Congress has long been a priority for the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, according to its website which says: “In Kentucky, policymakers are working to build a strong economic climate through tax reform and education investments that will help grow our workforce, but Congress must take action to ensure Kentucky employers have full access to a global talent pool.

“Specific actions should include fixing America’s broken worker visa program, increasing the allotment of employment-based green cards, and providing legal certainty for DACA recipients and long-term beneficiaries of the Temporary Protected Status program. Congress should pursue these priorities while simultaneously working to secure the border.”?

Liam Niemeyer contributed to this report.?

U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas holds a press conference at a U.S. Border Patrol station on Jan. 8, 2024 in Eagle Pass, Texas. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House Homeland Security Committee is gearing up for only the second impeachment in U.S. history of a Cabinet member.

The Republican-led committee on Tuesday will mark up articles of impeachment against Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, for what Democrats say is no more than a difference in immigration policy between the two parties.

House Republicans Sunday released the text of two articles of impeachment for “high crimes and misdemeanors” allegedly committed by Mayorkas, which they will mark up and vote on as a substitute amendment to H. Res. 863, first introduced by Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene last year.

The first article accuses Mayorkas of a “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law” in terms of “immigration and border security.”

The second article cites a “breach of public trust.” It says that Mayorkas has stated in his testimony to Congress that the U.S. Southern border is “secure.” Republicans disagree, and they argue that other statements made by Mayorkas are false.

Only one Cabinet member in U.S. history has been impeached, William W. Belknap, in 1876 for corruption. The former Iowa state legislator was charged with five articles of impeachment for “criminally disregarding his duty as Secretary of War and basely prostituting his high office to his lust for private gain.” Although the House voted articles of impeachment against him, he was tried and acquitted by the Senate.

The move to impeach Mayorkas comes as immigration remains a major focus for Congress, with the Senate finalizing the details of a bipartisan immigration deal to manage the U.S.-Mexico border. However, House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana has not indicated that he would bring that piece of legislation to the floor if the Senate passes it.

The current GOP front-runner, Donald Trump, has also lobbied congressional Republicans to reject the bipartisan deal, though negotiators so far have resisted that demand.

Text on the bipartisan agreement in the Senate is expected this week, according to lead negotiators.

‘Illegitimate exercise’

The White House and congressional Democrats have slammed House Republicans for moving forward with impeachment, calling the move “political games.”

“Beyond being an illegitimate exercise unworthy of the job Members of Congress were actually sent to Washington to do, the (Committee on Homeland Security) Republicans’ impeachment effort is baseless,” a DHS spokesperson said.

The White House has also argued that President Joe Biden is ready to make concessions on U.S. border policy. Hard-line immigration policies being finalized as part of the bipartisan Senate deal would make changes to asylum law and curb his administration’s use of parole authority used to grant temporary protections to migrants.

“What’s been negotiated would – if passed into law – be the toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border we’ve ever had in our country,” Biden said in a statement Friday. “It would give me, as President, a new emergency authority to shut down the border when it becomes overwhelmed.? And if given that authority, I would use it the day I sign the bill into law.”

House Republicans also accuse Mayorkas in their articles of impeachment of abusing his parole authority by granting it to migrants at the U.S. border as well as creating parole for certain nationals such as Afghans, Ukrainians, Cubans, Haitians and Venezuelans, among others.

Parole authority has existed since the 1950s.

Homeland Security Chair Mark Green of Tennessee held several hearings about impeachment proceeding for Mayorkas. In one hearing, Green had state attorneys general from Montana, Oklahoma and Missouri appear as witnesses. They argued that Mayorkas failed to fulfill his oath of office, often citing the high number of migrants claiming asylum at the Southern border, and therefore should be impeached.

The top Democrat on the committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, said in a statement that the articles of impeachment were a “sham.”

“What is glaringly missing from these articles is any real charge or even a shred of evidence of high crimes or misdemeanors — the Constitutional standard for impeachment,” he said. “They are abusing Congress’ impeachment power to appease their MAGA members, score political points, and deflect Americans’ attention from their do-nothing Congress.”

Green held another hearing in which the witnesses included two mothers who said the Biden administration’s immigration policies played a role in their daughters’ deaths.

The push to oust Mayorkas has been spearheaded by Georgia Rep. Greene. Since Greene came to Congress in 2021, she’s introduced articles of impeachment for Biden, Mayorkas, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General for the District of Columbia Matthew M. Graves.

The Constitution gives Congress the authority to remove the president, vice president and federal civil officers “for treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

WASHINGTON — Top U.S. Senate negotiators said Thursday that final details on an immigration policy deal remain under debate in the U.S. Senate, despite outside pressure from GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump to sink any agreement as he makes immigration his central campaign message.

The No. 2 Senate Republican and GOP whip, Sen. John Thune, said that negotiations on an immigration deal tied to the passage of a multi-billion-dollar global securities supplemental package are at “a critical moment, and we’ve got to drive hard to get this done.”

“If we can’t get there, then we’ll go to Plan B,” the South Dakota Republican said.

He did not go into details on what a “Plan B” would look like or if a deal on immigration would be removed from the supplemental, which would provide critical aid to Ukraine that some Republican and Democratic senators are advocating as the country runs low on ammunition in its war with Russia.

Like in his first presidential campaign, Trump has made immigration a main theme, often referring to migrants claiming asylum at the Southern border as an “invasion.” On his social media site, Truth Social, he has urged congressional Republicans to not accept a deal.

During a closed-door meeting on Wednesday night, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky acknowledged the difficulty of passing an immigration bill and the potential it would undermine Trump, Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford, the top Republican negotiator of the deal, told reporters at the Capitol.

But Lankford disputed that McConnell’s comments, which were first reported by Punchbowl News, meant a deal on immigration would be killed so that Trump can attack President Joe Biden on the issue.

“McConnell was laying out the political realities of where things are, and it was the elephant-in-the-room conversation,” Lankford said. “We’re in a political election season.”

But Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, a longtime Trump critic, told CNN that “the fact that (Trump) would communicate to Republican senators and Congress people that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem, but basically wants to blame Biden for it — this is really appalling.”

Lankford said that he has not talked to Trump in months and that he, along with the bipartisan group of senators working on the border deal — Sens. Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, and Kyrsten Sinema, independent of Arizona — are still moving forward.

“It’s now the end of January, in the middle of the presidential primary season, so I think that’s the shift that has occurred that he’s just acknowledging,” Lankford said of McConnell. Trump on Tuesday sailed to victory in the New Hampshire presidential primary, following his victory in the Jan. 15 Iowa caucuses, with former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley his sole major remaining opponent.

It’s also unclear whether any eventual Senate deal will survive in the House, as GOP Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana is demanding hard-line House immigration legislation be adopted and is moving forward with impeachment proceedings for U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over his immigration policies.

Johnson has also thrown his support behind Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who is defying U.S. Supreme Court orders and the White House in keeping and installing razor wire along the Texas-Mexico border.

Parole targeted?

While no framework or bill text of a Senate deal has been released, some of the proposals put forth would curb the Biden administration’s use of parole authority, which the administration has heavily relied on to grant temporary protections to migrants by allowing them to live and work in the United States without visas.

The Biden administration has invoked its parole authority more often than previous administrations to manage the large number of migrants at the Southern border, according to data compiled by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC, which compiles immigration data.

The deal is also likely to make changes to asylum law that would raise the bar for migrants claiming asylum.

For four months, Lankford, Sinema, and Murphy have worked to strike a deal with the White House to free up more than $100 billion in supplemental global security aid to Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and for U.S. border security.

Senate Republicans have hinged their support for the global supplemental package on immigration policy changes.

If passed, it would be the most substantial change to immigration law in 30 years.

Whether a deal passes is up to Republicans, Murphy said.

“We have negotiated a border policy package, we did what Republicans asked us to do, and now they seem to be having a hard time actually closing the deal,” he said.

Murphy said that the negotiators have an outline that appropriators are considering. He added that he’s not sure if aid to Ukraine would be unlinked to changes in immigration policy.

“I think what is very scary to some Republicans is that the deal we have reached will actually fix a big part of the problem, and I know for Donald Trump and some Republicans, it’s not in their best interest for there to be policy changes that actually fix the broken asylum system, or give the president new tools to better manage the border,” Murphy said.

Sen. Steve Daines, the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the GOP campaign arm, said that he has not spoken to Trump about the immigration deal.

“It seems to me quite ironic that folks are blaming Trump for the border deal when this is Biden who created the problem and can solve the problem unilaterally through executive action,” the Montana Republican said.

South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, a staunch Trump supporter, said that he’s talked to the former president and has “told him what we’re trying to accomplish,” but declined to answer questions if the deal could be passed without Trump’s approval.

Some Republicans reluctant to wait

Despite the push from Trump to quash the talks, some Senate Republicans said that they have an obligation to address the Southern border.

GOP Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who endorsed Trump earlier this week, said that “Texas can’t afford to wait 11 months,” referring to a potential second Trump presidency in 2025.

“Some people have said, well, the (immigration) issue is going to go away, and so that’ll be denying President Trump the issue. I think that’s a fantasy,” Cornyn said. “You’re not going to turn off what’s happening at the border like a water faucet, so this is going to continue to be a problem and it’s obviously a very, potent, political issue.”

He said that while Trump is “an important voice,” the Senate “has a job to do, and we intend to do it.”

Lankford echoed the same sentiments, and expressed doubt that Republicans would be able to get substantial immigration policy done under a second term with Trump because “we tried to do some immigration work while President Trump was president (and) Democrats would not join us in that conversation, and I’m not sure that they would in the next administration in that time period as well.”

Lankford noted that the deal they are working on now, if passed, will set immigration policy for decades.

“It’s really setting what’s going to be the policy direction for a long time,” he said. “So I encourage people to have a longer look on this, to say, ‘What can we do to be able to make sure that we have a consistent policy that works better than what we have now?’”

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, center, speaks to reporters after a White House meeting on Wednesday, Jan. 17, 2024, about supplemental aid for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and U.S. border security. At left is Rep. Michael Turner, R-Ohio, and at right is Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s White House gathering with lawmakers to find a compromise on foreign aid and immigration was “productive,” U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson said Wednesday, but a deal has still not been reached.

Biden hosted congressional leaders and other lawmakers to discuss the administration’s stalled $106 billion national security supplemental request, which includes aid for Ukraine and Israel.

Senate Republicans have refused to support the White House request, which was sent to Capitol Hill in October, unless new policies curbing asylum and parole are attached. And House GOP leadership has insisted changes resemble their border security bill dubbed H.R. 2, which passed in the lower chamber on a party-line vote in May.

“We understand that there’s concern about the safety, security, sovereignty of Ukraine, but the American people have those same concerns about our own domestic sovereignty and our safety and our security,” Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, said after the meeting.

Republican lawmakers have been focused on immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border as arrivals have increased, and as the party’s 2024 presidential front-runner, former President Donald Trump, campaigns on the issue, often using terms like “invasion.”

More than a dozen key committee chairs and ranking members joined House and Senate leaders Wednesday in talks with the administration’s top national security and budget officials, including National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and Office of Management Budget Director Shalanda Young.

Parts of the meeting were classified, according to White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

Biden used the meeting to underscore “the importance of Congress ensuring Ukraine has the resources it needs — including air defense and artillery capabilities — to defend itself against Russia’s brutal invasion,” according to a readout of the discussion provided by the White House.

“The President discussed the strategic consequences of inaction for Ukraine, the United States, and the world. He was clear: Congress’s continued failure to act endangers the United States’ national security, the NATO Alliance, and the rest of the free world,” the readout stated.

Biden also told lawmakers “we must act now to address challenges at the border.”

The president is “encouraged” by bipartisan negotiations in the Senate and urged Congress to “swiftly” pass his full request, according to the readout.

‘We need the questions answered’

Johnson, speaking to reporters outside the White House after the meeting, said he spoke to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in December and heard from the leader that “the necessary ingredient is the proper weapons systems that they need.”

“There are certain things that are needed to ensure that they can prevail,” Johnson continued. “We need the questions answered about the strategy, about the endgame, and about the accountability for the precious treasure of the American people.”

Still, he said, “we must insist that the border be the top priority. I think we have some consensus around that table. Everyone understands the urgency of that.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer speaking outside the White House shortly after Johnson, described a “very positive meeting” and a “large amount of agreement around the table that we must do Ukraine, and we must do border.”

Schumer said both parties agreed that helping Ukraine is “essential” and that a loss for that nation “would be nothing short of devastating.”

“The only way we will do border and Ukraine, or even either of them, is (by being) bipartisan,” said Schumer, a New York Democrat. “You cannot – cannot – do things with one party in a divided Congress. And so anyone who says, any party that says ‘do it my way or no way,’ we’re not going to get anything done.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, speaking back at the Capitol after the meeting, said he thought it was a “good idea” to get both Democratic and Republican lawmakers together.

“We had a really constructive discussion about the supplemental, which we anticipate will be on the floor next week,” McConnell said. “We’ve been talking about this for a very long time. It’s time to try to act.”

McConnell said he believes negotiators are “close” to brokering a bipartisan agreement on border security and immigration policy changes.

Such a deal would allow the Senate to move forward with the emergency spending package that includes aid for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and U.S. border enforcement agencies.

“It’s not going to get better in my opinion until you actually say, ‘We’re going to it next week.’ And I think that’s the view of the majority leader,” McConnell said.

Schumer didn’t commit to putting the bill on the floor for a vote next week, but said once there is an agreement the body will move “very quickly.”

“I am more optimistic than ever before that we can come to an agreement. I put the chances a little bit greater than half now,” he said after the meeting.

Negotiations over border security are being headed by Sen. James Lankford, Republican of Oklahoma, Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut and Kyrsten Sinema, independent of Arizona. The trio has been working to strike a deal with the White House since before Christmas.

Earlier Wednesday

Before leaving for the meeting, McConnell brushed aside disparaging comments from House GOP leaders about Senate negotiations on border and immigration policy, noting that if Republicans controlled the government, they likely wouldn’t get a single Democratic vote for the types of policies being discussed.

“This is a unique opportunity to accomplish something in divided government that wouldn’t be there under unified (Republican) government,” McConnell said. “So we’re hoping to get a credible border package.”

McConnell later noted during that press conference whatever the Senate eventually passes could actually garner Biden’s signature. He also suggested that the two chambers could go to conference to reconcile their differences.

Murphy said during a press conference before the White House meeting that while he’s not yet optimistic about the negotiations, he agrees with Schumer “that we are closer than we have ever been before.”

“Our goal is to give the executive branch more tools to better manage the border while living up to our values as a nation of immigrants,” Murphy said. “This is the most complicated area of American statute, so it’s not surprising that it’s taking us some time to work out the final few issues and get those resolved into text.”

Ahead of the meeting with Biden, Johnson said that he would continue to seek “answers to critical questions” about Ukraine.

“… But before we even talk about Ukraine, I am going to tell the president what I’m telling all of you and we’ve told the American people: Border, border, border. We have to take care of our own house. We have to secure our own border before we talk about doing anything else,” Johnson told reporters during the House Republicans’ weekly press conference.

When asked to respond to Johnson’s comments, White House National Security Council spokesman Adm. John Kirby said, “Today’s meeting is about Ukraine. That’s what we’re going to focus on in that discussion.”

“I would remind (Johnson) that since the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine in February ‘22 we have provided multiple classified and unclassified briefings to members of Congress,” Kirby also said.

The U.S. provided its latest aid package to Ukraine in late December, and the administration said that was the final assistance available until Congress approves new aid.

Kirby said Ukraine continues to go through its stockpiles of artillery shells and rockets “at a pretty advanced clip.”

The White House believes negotiations on the deal are “headed in the right direction,” Jean-Pierre said.

When asked about White House negotiations with Senate and House Republicans, Jean-Pierre said House Republicans “have gotten in the way when it comes to border security.”

“We want to work with them, but they’ve been very clear where they stand,” she said during the daily press briefing.

U.S. Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama speaks at a press conference on Thursday, Dec. 7, with other Republican members of the U.S. Senate, on talks over border security. From left, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, John Thune of South Dakota, John Cornyn of Texas, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. (Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

Parents-to-be from Haiti stand at a gap in the U.S.-Mexico border wall after having traveled from South America to the United States on Dec. 10, 2021 in Yuma, Arizona. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The effects of immigration and crime on national parks took center stage Wednesday during a U.S. House hearing led by Republicans.

Members of the U.S. House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations discussed trash accumulation, the destruction of wildlife habitats and the illegal marijuana growing operations tied to cartels as environmental consequences of migrants coming onto park lands. Republican members also expressed concerns about the placement of asylum seekers’ camps on national park land.

House Natural Resources Committee ranking member Raúl Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat, said it’s part of a humanitarian crisis.

Michael Reynolds, the National Park Service deputy director, and Chris French, the National Forest System deputy chief at the U.S. Forest Service, testified about how their agencies collaborate with U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

French said that while the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is primarily responsible for protecting the nation’s borders, the U.S. Forest Service’s “stewardship and law enforcement responsibilities are vital to assisting the border patrol with effectively defending national security, responding to terrorist threats, safeguarding human life and stopping the degradation of natural and cultural resources on National Forest System lands.”

The three other testifying witnesses were Julie Axelrod, the director of litigation at the Center for Immigration Studies, a non-profit that seeks to limit immigration into the U.S.; John Nores, a retired lieutenant with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and former Marijuana Enforcement Team leader at the agency; and Verlon M. Jose, the chairman of the Tohono O’odham Nation in Sells, Arizona.

Representatives and witnesses frequently referenced migrant camps at the National Park Service Gateway National Recreation Area’s Floyd Bennett Field, an airfield in the Brooklyn borough of New York City.

The city?entered?lease agreements in September with the National Park Service to create emergency housing for migrants at the airfield. New York City Mayor Eric Adams said the city has been forced to look for new options with thousands of asylum seekers arriving in the city and no federal plan for their housing.

The House Natural Resources Committee released a?statement?in September, in which Chairman Bruce Westerman, an Arkansas Republican, condemned the placement of migrant camps in national parks.

“The (Biden) administration has now set a terrible precedent to use our public lands across the country to house migrants,” Westerman said at the hearing.

Westerman asked Reynolds if he could “assure concerned Americans that their national parks will not be used to house any additional migrants.”

“I can assure you that we will review everything for legal basis, and conservation protection is job one,” Reynolds said.

Westerman said the building of migrant shelters on National Park Service land is not his “vision” for how the parks should be used, nor does he think many Americans consider that to be the purpose of these parks.

“These areas face challenges that unfortunately are becoming increasingly familiar across the United States, from piles of trash to concerns about human trafficking,” Westerman said.

Humanitarian crisis and local intervention

CBP has?reported?more than 6 million encounters at the U.S. southern border since 2020.

“The unprecedented number of refugees and asylum seekers that are coming to the border is a reality,” Grijalva said. “It is a humanitarian crisis and needs to be dealt with.”

Grijalva said it is important to have a supplemental spending bill that can provide adequate resources “for the management of that crisis.”

“It is not right, nor is it proper, that local communities bear the burden financially and otherwise, for the processing, shelter and transition of those seeking refuge and asylum in this country,” Grijalva said.

Westerman said 35% of the land along the U.S. Southern border is Native American land.

Jose, whose tribal nation shares a 62-mile border with Mexico, said the Tohono O’odham Nation spends about $3 million each year “to help meet the U.S. border security responsibilities.”

The Tohono O’odham Nation police force spends more than a third of its time working on border issues, “including the investigation of immigrant deaths, illegal drug seizures and human smuggling,” Jose said.

The types of border security measures implemented on the Nation’s lands include:

• A High Intensity Drug Trafficking Task Force.
• An Immigration and Customs Enforcement office and Customs and Border Protection forward operating bases.
• An ICE tactical patrol unit called the “Shadow Wolves.”
• Vehicle barriers “that run the entire length of the Tribal border and a patrol road that parallels it.”
• A CBP checkpoint on the Nation’s major highway.
• A surveillance tower system.

“The Nation shares the federal government’s concerns about border security, and we believe that the measures we have taken to assist CBP and our own law enforcement efforts are necessary to protect the Nation’s members specifically and the United States generally,” Jose said.

Trash and drugs on federal lands

Republican members said they were concerned about trash accumulation at the border.

Rep. Juan Ciscomani, an Arizona Republican who is not a member of the committee, joined the hearing to speak with the witnesses. Ciscomani’s congressional district sits along the U.S.-Mexico border and contains areas of federal land.

Ciscomani asked French for statistics on the amount of trash picked up on national forest lands along the Southern U.S. border.

French said he was not “not entirely sure,” and that his agency did not have specific data on the amount of trash picked up this year compared to previous years. He said about 40,000 individuals were apprehended on National Forest System lands so far this year.

“What I can tell you is that this has been a continuous problem,” French said.

Subcommittee Chairman Paul Gosar, an Arizona Republican, asked French about the illegal marijuana growing sites operating on national forests. The Republican committee members said these growing sites are linked to international cartels.

French said that in the previous five years, the USFS has remediated 336 grow sites, and removed about 350 miles of irrigation pipes. About 300,000 pounds of trash have been removed from the grow sites. French said that toxic and banned substances have also been removed.

Nores, who co-founded the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Marijuana Enforcement Team, said in the team’s first five years, it “destroyed 3 million toxically tainted cannabis plans” and about 29 tons of “toxically tainted processed cannabis for sale and distribution.”

Nores said the team also made nearly 1,000 felony arrests.

Nores raised concerns about black market cannabis operations “not only on public lands, but on rural private land as well.”

Tohono O’odham Nation border wall concerns

Jose said his community has concerns about the?construction of the border wall, which he said is ineffective in the desert Southwest.

He said the border wall has damaged sacred tribal areas, including the destruction of human burial sites, and has affected cultural practices.

“The Nation wholeheartedly agrees with GAO that the federal agencies must do a better job coordinating with each other and with the Nation on a strategy to mitigate the harm that a wall has caused,” Jose said.

Kentucky is one of 17 states that allow students without permanent legal status to access in-state tuition, according to the Higher Ed Immigration Portal. Shown here is the Albert B. Chandler Hospital on the campus of the University of Kentucky. (Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images)

When Cristian Dubon Solis?was getting ready to graduate from a Boston high school in 2020, he started planning to apply to college. It was only then he realized that as an immigrant lacking permanent legal status, he wouldn’t qualify for in-state tuition at Massachusetts state universities, nor for state-sponsored financial aid.

With no way to afford a four-year school to pursue his dream major, environmental science, he put those plans on hold.

“I took a few gap years afterward,” said the now 21-year-old from East Boston, a community where about half the residents are Hispanic or Latino. Solis now advocates for young immigrants as a student coordinator for a nonprofit group called SIM, which formerly stood for Student Immigration Movement.

One of four siblings, Solis came to the United States from El Salvador at age 3. His three younger sisters were born in the U.S., he said. Family and friends didn’t discuss their immigration status, so he never heard about the tuition restrictions.

“In families of the immigrant community it’s very hush-hush, you don’t talk about it,” he said. “It’s hard to figure out what options I had or didn’t have, because nobody talked about it.”

But now Solis is about to apply to colleges in Massachusetts, including UMass-Boston.

Democratic Gov. Maura Healey signed the state budget this month with a provision that will allow certain immigrants without permanent legal status — those who have attended high school in Massachusetts for at least three years or who have earned a GED certificate — to pay in-state tuition rates at public universities. The law takes effect immediately.

The idea has bipartisan appeal, with some conservative supporters this year saying it helps reduce workforce shortages and boost tax revenue.

In June, Nevada Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo enacted a law allowing immigrants who have been granted status under the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Act, or DACA program, to qualify for in-state tuition after living in Nevada for 12 months. That action expanded on a law that allowed high school graduates lacking permanent legal status to do so.

And in Florida this year, state lawmakers rejected a proposal from Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis to scrap in-state tuition for students without permanent legal status. He had wanted to include it in a bill to tighten restrictions on immigrants living in the country illegally.

But critics of the in-state tuition changes argue states are facing an influx of immigrants and already are stretched thin to pay for needed housing and services. Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican, in June signed a 2024 budget that included a boost for higher education funding but prohibited students without permanent legal status from getting in-state tuition or state scholarships.

Massachusetts became the 24th state to grant immigrants without legal status access to in-state tuition, according to the Higher Ed Immigration Portal, a website run by a coalition of 18 higher education and immigration organizations to provide information and resources to immigrant students.

In-state tuition is generally thousands of dollars less per year than for out-of-state students. For example, the undergraduate tuition and fees at Massachusetts state schools averaged $10,036 for state residents and $28,813 for out-of-state residents in the 2022-23 school year, according to College Tuition Compare, a nationwide college evaluation website.

Seventeen of the states granting in-state tuition, which includes Kentucky, also allow the students to be eligible for financial aid, as does the District of Columbia, according to the Higher Ed Immigration Portal.

Four states — Delaware, Iowa, Michigan and Pennsylvania — restrict the number of public universities at which immigrants without permanent legal status are eligible for in-state tuition, according to the portal.

Five states — Arkansas, Idaho, Maine, Mississippi and Ohio — provide that tuition discount only to young immigrants who have DACA status. The Obama-era DACA program allows immigrants who were brought to the United States as children and who meet other qualifications to avoid deportation and obtain work permits. New applications for the program are on hold while long-running court battles play out.

By contrast, nine states specifically block access to in-state tuition or state financial aid for residents lacking permanent legal status, the immigration portal found. They are: Indiana, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina. The last three have laws that prevent students without permanent legal status from even enrolling in all or some public colleges, though there may be some exceptions for students with DACA status, according to the portal.

Opponents of extending in-state tuition argue that scarce state resources should not be spent on immigrants living in the country illegally, particularly when states are dealing with a wave of new immigrant families that strains the states’ safety net.

While the Massachusetts law garnered wide support in the Democratic-controlled state, some Republican opponents pointed out that the Healey administration recently called for the federal government to speed funding to provide shelter and services for immigrants in the state and encouraged state residents to take families into their homes.

“It’s the wrong priority at this date and time,” said Republican state Sen. Ryan Fattman in an interview with Stateline. “The governor declared a state of emergency for migrant influx into the state. We have a lot of shelters that are overrun. [At the same time,] we are providing a lot of benefits to people who are not lawfully in Massachusetts, in-state tuition being one of them.

“The question is can we continue to afford this?” Fattman said.

But advocates for granting in-state tuition say the state must educate young immigrants if it wants to make up for the number of residents who are leaving the state and taking tax revenue with them. Massachusetts lost 110,900 people to out-migration from April 2020 to July 2022, according to the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, a nonpartisan research group. In-migration in 2022 was about 43,000, the organization found.

“What Massachusetts did is good for the people of Massachusetts, it’s good for the ‘Dreamers’ who get a chance to go to school and pay in-state tuition,” said Don Graham, a founder of TheDream.Us, an organization that gives scholarships to students who came to the U.S. illegally before age 16 and before Nov. 1, 2017. (“Dreamers” refers to young people brought to the United States illegally as children by family; the term stems from never-passed congressional legislation called the DREAM Act.)

“They become a health care worker, they become a teacher, they become a computer programmer. Seems to me that’s good for the ‘Dreamers’ and good for the state,” said Graham, who also is chair of the board of the Graham Holdings Company and former publisher of The Washington Post.

Miriam Feldblum, co-founder and executive director of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, a group comprised of university leaders, said consideration of in-state tuition for students without legal status has become increasingly important in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision to end affirmative action programs on campuses.

“As colleges and universities look at how to attract diverse populations, it is incumbent upon all institutions to look at immigrant students,” she said in an interview with Stateline. “It is one important strategy to attract a diverse and talented crop of students.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: [email protected]. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

Immigrants waited overnight next to the U.S.-Mexico border fence to seek asylum in the United States on Jan. 7, 2023 as viewed from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday overwhelmingly ruled that Texas and Louisiana lacked the legal standing to challenge the Biden administration’s deportation guidelines, granting a win to the White House on immigration policy.

The states objected to the White House’s directive to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to prioritize arresting and deporting noncitizens who have recently crossed the border without authorization and noncitizens who pose a threat to public safety.

The White House wanted those guidelines in place rather than a focus on deporting the millions of undocumented people who have lived in the U.S. for years — a departure from a Trump-era policy.

In an 8-1 decision in the case, United States v. Texas, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the opinion for the majority, calling the suit Texas and Louisiana brought “an extraordinarily unusual lawsuit.”

“They want a federal court to order the Executive Branch to alter its arrest policies so as to make more arrests,” Kavanaugh wrote. “Federal courts have not traditionally entertained that kind of lawsuit; indeed, the States cite no precedent for a lawsuit like this.”

There are an estimated 11 million undocumented people in the U.S. who have lived in the country for years and sometimes decades. In the DHS guidelines, Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the agency did not have the resources to deport every undocumented person in the nation.

Kavanaugh was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., and the court’s three liberals, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett also agreed, but for different reasons. Justice Samuel Alito Jr. was the lone dissent.

“DHS looks forward to reinstituting these Guidelines, which had been effectively applied by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers to focus limited resources and enforcement actions on those who pose a threat to our national security, public safety, and border security,” Mayorkas said in a statement following the decision.

“The Guidelines enable DHS to most effectively accomplish its law enforcement mission with the authorities and resources provided by Congress.”

States and feds?

During oral arguments in November, Judd Stone, the solicitor general with the Texas attorney general’s office, argued that the federal government is required by U.S. immigration law to deport any undocumented immigrant, regardless of a lack of resources.

Elizabeth B. Prelogar, solicitor general with the Department of Justice, argued that the Biden administration’s memo does not ignore enforcement laws, but is “prioritizing limited resources” in its enforcement measures.

Muzaffar Chishti, an attorney and director of the Migration Policy Institute office at New York University School of Law, said in an interview with States Newsroom that the court’s decision “has certainly put a dent in the ability of states to bring any action against the federal government on immigration.”

“Whether the standing principles today that the Supreme Court has laid out will apply equally in all future (cases) that states bring to the Supreme Court, we don’t know,” he said.

Lena Graber, senior staff attorney for the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, said in a statement that the decision should “shut down further attempts by states from suing the federal government whenever they do not like a federal policy.”

Graber said the ruling affirms that the Biden administration has the “discretion to determine when to arrest or deport immigrants and when not to.”

“Now, the Biden Administration must reinvest in prosecutorial discretion and prioritize ending immigration arrests, detention, and deportations,” Graber said. “The Biden Administration must stop the destructive impact that policing, surveillance and immigration enforcement and detention has on communities.”

Agent discretion

The guidelines were first issued in 2021, and the White House gave U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents discretion on whether enforcement actions were needed. ICE agents were told to focus on noncitizens who were suspected terrorists, had already committed crimes or were recently arrested at the border.

“In exercising our discretion, we are guided by the fact that the majority of undocumented noncitizens who could be subject to removal have been contributing members of our communities for years,” according to the memo written by Mayorkas.

“They include individuals who work on the frontlines in the battle against COVID, lead our congregations of faith, teach our children, do back-breaking farm work to help deliver food to our table, and contribute in many other meaningful ways,” he continued. “The fact an individual is a removable noncitizen therefore should not alone be the basis of an enforcement action against them.”

Texas sued and a Texas district court judge halted the policy, determining that it violated federal policy. The Biden administration appealed, but a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in New Orleans kept the block in place.

The Biden administration submitted an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court to block the ruling by the Texas judge, Drew B. Tipton, a Donald Trump appointee. The justices then voted 5-4 to keep the policy on hold until the case could be heard last year before the court.

Jeremy McKinney, the former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said in an interview with States Newsroom that the Supreme Court’s decision made it clear that Texas did not have standing.

He said that eight justices agreed that the court could not remedy the harm, known as redress, and therefore the states don’t have standing.

“They basically said that the courts can’t fix this problem, Texas, it’s a policy dispute, and that’s something that you settle through the political process and not in court,” he said.

McKinney added that the decision could play into another immigration-related case that will determine whether a program to protect undocumented people brought without authorization into the country will be protected.

Those more than 500,000 undocumented people referred to as Dreamers are currently waiting for a Texas judge to determine whether the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program is legal.?It’s a case that many immigration attorneys are expecting to make its way to the Supreme Court by 2024.

Parents-to-be from Haiti stand at a gap in the U.S.-Mexico border wall after having traveled from South America to the United States on Dec. 10, 2021 in Yuma, Arizona. A bill passed by the GOP-controlled U.S. House would resume construction on the border wall. The Senate is not expected to take the bill up. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

DACA recipients and their supporters rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court on June 18, 2020 in Washington, DC. The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, denied the Trump administration's attempt to end DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Karen Judith Briseno Ortiz mailed in her application for a program meant to protect undocumented children from deportation, one day after her twin sister’s application.

Her sister was accepted into the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, but Briseno Ortiz, who grew up in Dallas, was not. Now her application is in limbo due to an injunction placed by a Texas federal judge, who determined the Obama-era program was unlawful.

“That opportunity got taken from me,” she said of Texas District Judge Andrew Hanen’s decision, which prevented the government from accepting new applicants into the program, but allowed it to remain for current participants as it undergoes litigation.

Multiple immigration attorneys who spoke with States Newsroom said they expect a decision on the legality of DACA, when it eventually goes to the U.S. Supreme Court, to not be issued until 2024. Congress appears unlikely to take action, although immigration advocates have suggestions about policy initiatives the Biden administration could study for DACA recipients.

In the meantime, they must wait.

One legal to work, one not?

Briseno Ortiz and her sister, now 20, live together and attend Texas A&M University.

One twin is allowed to work, because DACA gives her access to work permits and a Social Security number.

But Briseno Ortiz, a chemistry major, cannot get work permits and will likely have to leave her home state to attend medical school, since there is only one medical school in Texas that admits DACA students.

The program, which has protected more than 800,000 undocumented children from deportation since 2012, is at risk of being deemed unlawful, leaving recipients in limbo and uncertain if they will be protected from deportation.

Briseno Ortiz is the only one of her three siblings not in the program, despite being eligible for DACA. The Migration Policy Institute, a think tank that tracks migration, estimates that as of December 2021, there are 1.5 million undocumented people who are DACA-eligible but not enrolled.

“It’s frustrating because we’re just waiting,” Briseno Ortiz said of her application and others that are still pending due to the injunction.

DACA legal challenges

The Trump administration tried to rescind the program in 2017. That is the same year the twins turned 15, making them eligible for DACA.

When the Supreme Court in June 2020 deemed the Trump administration’s actions were unlawful, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services should have begun to accept first-time DACA applications, but the Trump administration didn’t.

It wasn’t until December 2020 that USCIS complied and opened up applications for first-time applicants, which is when Briseno Ortiz and her sister sent in their applications. Her twin’s paperwork was sent on Dec. 22 and hers on Dec. 23, 2020.

They sent their applications one day apart to avoid any confusion with immigration officials or hold-up with their applications because they share the same birthday and first and last name.

Briseno Ortiz’ twin was accepted in DACA in June 2021, just before Hanen’s decision, which barred future applications, but allowed for renewals. This stems from a lawsuit brought by Republican-led states that argue the program is burdensome to states and the government overreached its power in creating the program.

Briseno Ortiz said she feels helpless waiting for the court to make a decision.

The Biden administration appealed that July 2021 decision to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, headquartered in New Orleans. A three-judge panel said that the Obama administration did not have the authority to create the program in 2012 and sent the case back to Hanen.

The panel asked the judge to look at the new version of a rule on the program issued by the Biden administration in August 2022, which was set to take effect on Oct. 31.

As of now, the lower court is hearing arguments about whether the Biden administration’s new rule, which is nearly identical to the memo creating DACA, is lawful. A schedule for that case has not been set yet.

“But advocates are not very hopeful that the decision coming out of this court will be positive or in favor of DACA,” said Veronica Garcia, an attorney at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center.

She said the best case scenario is if DACA gets struck down, renewals will be allowed to continue while the case then goes to the Supreme Court.

Some hopes

Muzaffar Chishti, an attorney and director of the Migration Policy Institute office at New York University School of Law, said he believes the Biden administration has given DACA more legal standing by writing a rule on the program, rather than having it as a memo, which the Obama administration crafted.

“That doesn’t mean that it will not be ruled unlawful, but it’s in a much better legal footing,” he said, pointing out that when Hanen first looked at the Obama-era program he decided that the administration overreached its power in creating the program through a memo, rather than proper rule making.

Chishti said that in many ways, the Biden administration has already responded to Hanen’s arguments by going through the rule making process in creating DACA.

He added that briefs in the case can be filed through April, meaning that a date for oral arguments won’t be set until after that.

“I don’t think we’re looking at a decision in this case till at least the summer,” Chishti said.

Then, once the case is appealed to the 5th Circuit, as expected, and then the Supreme Court, Chishti said he doesn’t expect a decision until the spring of 2024 or later.

“So that means there’s nothing imminent wrong potentially happening to the existing DACA recipients,” he said.

DACA ‘is outdated’

Juliana Macedo do Nascimento, the deputy director of federal advocacy of United We Dream, said DACA could be ended as early as next year by the Supreme Court, during the Biden administration, “which would just be a shame given his history, and his legacy with the program.”

United We Dream is a nonprofit youth immigration advocacy group.

“DACA was never enough, and it’s outdated,” she said, adding that there are 11 million undocumented people in the country who also need protections.

Macedo do Nascimento pointed out that undocumented youth who would be eligible for the program can’t qualify because they were not born by 2007. In order to qualify for DACA, undocumented youth had to have continuingly resided in the U.S. from 2007.

“We know that immigrant youths who are turning 15,16, who would otherwise be eligible for it, are no longer eligible because they weren’t even alive in 2007,” she said.

So far, the only thing that would change DACA is an act of Congress, she said.

Congress stalled

Briseno Ortiz said she doesn’t have much hope that Congress will take legislative action to protect DACA recipients, and sees the only course of action to get involved in immigration advocacy groups.

Even when Democrats controlled the U.S. House last year, Democrats in the Senate did not have the votes to overcome the 60-vote threshold requirement.

Last year, Senate Democrat leaders set a December deadline of passing any bipartisan legislation to create a pathway to citizenship for DACA recipients.

With the House majority won by Republicans in the 2022 midterm elections, Democrats only had a couple of months to pass any legislation protecting DACA before they lost the House.

There were some talks of a bipartisan agreement with Sens. Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat from Arizona who’s now become an independent, and Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, but nothing solidified.

Even with Congress gridlocked, Macedo do Nascimento said, the Biden administration still has some policy initiates it can take to protect those in DACA, such as through Temporary Protected Status, which is granted to those who are already residing in the U.S. but whose home country is deemed unsafe for return, and allows those recipients to stay in the U.S. temporarily, or? Deferred Enforced Departure.

DED is not a specific immigration status, but allows those covered to be exempt from deportation for a certain period of time.

The administration could also include countries with a high number of DACA recipients for TPS, such as Mexico, Macedo do Nascimento added.

“The parole authority that the administration has is really powerful, and they can use that to protect people,” she said.

New parole program

Early this year, the Biden administration announced a new parole program that would expand opportunities for migrants from Cuba, Haiti and Nicaragua to legally enter the United States.

The program will allow up to 30,000 migrants each month from those countries who have U.S.-based financial sponsors and have passed a background check to enter the country legally. They would be allowed to work temporarily for two years.

Macedo do Nascimento said the Biden administration could work to implement a similar parole program for those under DACA.

“We’re hopeful that they’re looking into these other options on how to use different tools to … protect people,” she said.

Democrats and immigration advocates welcomed the new parole program, but criticized the administration’s continued use and expansion of Title 42, which is a controversial policy that immediately turns away migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border during a health crisis, such as the coronavirus pandemic.

However, those parole programs that the Biden administration has implemented are already facing legal challenges from Republican-led states.

The White House did not respond to States Newsroom’s requests for comment on its plans pertaining to the potential ending of DACA.

In Tijuana Mexico, a refugee from Ukraine holds a Ukrainian passport before being allowed to cross the San Ysidro Port of Entry into the United States to seek asylum on March 22, 2022. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

In this handout image provided by the Bundeswehr, evacuees from Kabul sit inside a military aircraft as they arrive at Tashkent Airport on Aug. 22, 2021 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. (Handout/Bundeswehr via Getty Images)

More than a year ago, as Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, I concluded 27 years of uniformed service. I spent more than a year of my life in Afghanistan, serving in special operations, a fact only relevant because it brought me into close contact with members of the Afghan National Security Forces and Afghan civilian interpreters.

Much has been made of the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) process and the many stunning failures in its management. Those failures are at the center of a book I co-wrote with Afghan Interpreter Zainullah Zaki and U.S. Marine Major Thomas Schueman, “Always Faithful: A Story of War in Afghanistan, the Fall of Kabul, and the Unshakable Bond Between a Marine and an Interpreter. “But for all the failures in the execution of the now 16-year-old SIV legislation, there is at least a path to permanent resident status for Afghans who entered the U.S. under its auspices, however obstacle strewn that path may be.

Because of the complexities of our immigration laws, however, there has not been a similar path for the tens of thousands of Afghans brought to the United States under humanitarian parole amidst the shameful maelstrom that was our August 2021 run for the exit in Kabul. I spent most of that month helping to evacuate our Afghan allies, along with thousands of military and intelligence community veterans and citizen volunteers. We were united by a fundamental belief in the moral obligation to aid the people who trusted us enough to fight beside and for us. That simple belief should be mirrored by a simple path forward for Afghan parolees; a legislative vehicle to give them the certainty of a chance at the basics of a good life. The Afghan Adjustment Act (“AAA”), H.R.8685/S.4787, could be just that vehicle.

The AAA is bipartisan, bicameral legislation, introduced in early August 2022. The AAA ensures that Afghans paroled into the U.S. via Operation Allies Welcome may apply to stay here long-term with a direct pathway to permanent resident status. The House bill currently has 129 sponsors and cosponsors, with more in the Senate. That’s a good start, but American citizens need to register their support for the AAA with their representatives. It’s a matter of erasing a stain on our national honor.

Some may argue that, while SIV applicants met the obligation of at least one year of employment, “By, or on behalf of, the U.S. government [or] by the [International Security Assistance Force] or a successor mission in a capacity that required serving with US military personnel,” humanitarian parole recipients did not; that they were simply Afghans fighting for Afghanistan. That argument fails, however, for lack of nuance — a tragic trend in an America where we have access to more knowledge than any time in history, but often eschew the obligation to use it to achieve deeper understanding of an issue.

The Afghan nationals I know served in the Commando Kandaks and the various special mission units established by U.S. forces expressly to support our own goals. They fought with us. But in truth, they fought for us. Perhaps it’s a fact hard to understand from a cable pundit’s desk, but as a senior Special Forces officer and friend said to me, “They were often working off OUR target lists in support of U.S. objectives.” Then in August 2021, I watched helplessly, safe in my home in North Carolina, as many of them were turned back at the gates of Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA). The best we could do was tell our compatriots to run for another country. Of those unable to do so, those not killed outright are now in hiding, hunted by the Taliban regime.

For those who worry that those admitted could pose “security” issues, the AAA will require every applicant to undergo additional, rigorous vetting equivalent to the security screening they would have experienced if admitted as refugees. It is a significant, appropriate step. But Americans are not a people driven by fear. We are a nation built upon ideals of liberty and equality. It’s a belief that established precedent for the AAA in similar instances.

After failures in Cuba and Vietnam and the ongoing “I guess we’ll see” in Iraq, we’ve passed similar legislation, a recognition that our international reputation for fidelity is a national security issue. In this hyper-connected world, we need allies who believe we are who we say we are. Our record on that is mixed, a fact made more frustrating by the fact that it is the people who have carried the fight to implement American national security policy, rather than its political designers, who have most often been left to clean up the wreckage in its wake. Fulfilling obligations to those allies most loyal to our efforts is part of that. It is an obligation of every American citizen, regardless of political persuasion. If our shared humanity, and the bonds born in battle, are insufficient to merit a chance at “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” I fear for our future as the nation envisioned by the people who first signed on to the notion.

This commentary was published in NC Policy Watch.?