The Laudable Pursuit: Congress Must Act to End Suffering at the Border
June 22, 2018
"to elevate the condition of men--to lift artificial weights from all shoulders, to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all, to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance, in the race of life." --Abraham Lincoln
Chairman's Note: Congress Must Act to End Suffering at the Border
It is a searing image. A toddler in pink shoes, a pink jacket, and jean shorts staring up at her mother who is talking to a United States border patrol agent. She is afraid. She is in tears. She could be any of our daughters.
This young girl quickly became a symbol for opposition to President Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy of prosecuting all illegal border crossings. A policy that, due to a 1997 federal court decision, also necessitates separating parents from children when families are arrested for crossing the border illegally.
Millions of Americans were horrified by the image of the crying girl in pink, as well as the many other similar images that came out over the last week. Progressive activists claimed that the thousands of Central American migrants crossing the border illegally were fleeing gang violence in their home countries.
The violence in Central American is so bad, we were told, that these families deserved asylum in the United States. Any federal detention of these families, we were told, would be inhumane; so all of them must be released into the United States until their asylum cases can be adjudicated.
This is a compelling argument. No one wants to separate families - ever. We also desperately want to help families fleeing violence in their home countries. And President Trump did issue an executive order Wednesday announcing his intention to challenge the federal court decision that requires children to be separated from their parents if the parents are detained for longer than 20 days.
But not all of the story that progressives are telling about the border crisis is true.
Turns out the girl in pink, who has since been put on the cover of Time magazine, was never separated from her mother. Furthermore, it turns out her mother was not fleeing Honduras because of violence at all.
Her husband says she paid a human trafficker $6,000 to smuggle her and her youngest daughter (she has two other children) to the United States because she “had always wanted to experience the American dream.” Life in Honduras was “fine but not great,” the husband told The Daily Mail, adding “It’s hard to find a good job here and that’s why many people choose to leave.”
Now no one can blame a mother for trying to better the life of her child. But seeking better economic opportunity is not a valid basis for refugee status. And the number of migrants coming from Central America claiming asylum has skyrocketed. According to data from the Justice Department the number of asylum claims from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador increased 234% between 2014 and 2016. More individuals applied from asylum from these three countries in 2014-2016 than in the preceding 17 years combined.
And the percentage of asylum seekers from these countries that are actually granted asylum are not high; in 2016 less than 16% of affirmative asylum seekers from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras actually received asylum.
Why are so many thousands of Central Americans paying smugglers to bring them to the United States to apply for asylum if so few of them are granted asylum?
Because they know if they can just get into the country, our border law enforcement infrastructure has been so overwhelmed that it is highly likely they will be released into the country, and then they can skip their court date and just wait for a Democratic president to grant them amnesty or deferred action status.
This is not an acceptable or humanitarian outcome. It only creates more heart-wrenching scenes like the one currently on the cover of Time magazine.
It is time for Congress to act. We can’t fix this problem entirely, but we can definitely start to make it a little better.
This week Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) both introduced separate pieces of legislation that share some commonsense solutions to help address our border problem.
Both bills both require and authorize the Department of Homeland Security to keep migrant families together. Both bills authorize the creation of new facilities to house migrant families together while their asylum claims are adjudicated. And both bills authorize hundreds of new immigration judges so that families can have their asylum claims adjudicated in a timely manner.
These bills will not solve our immigration crisis entirely. But they will allow for more humane law enforcement at out nation’s border. We will all be able to sleep easier knowing that parents will not be separated from their children.
Issue in Focus: Waters of the United States
In the movie The Lion King, Mufasa is teaching young Simba about the lands he will eventually rule by saying “Look, Simba, everything the light touches is our kingdom…”
While this moment is fine when played out by a cartoon monarchy, it is gross federal overreach when it’s perpetuated by a federal bureaucracy in the United States. Yet that is essentially what is happening under the Waters of the United States, or WOTUS, rule that was imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corp of Engineers in 2015. These bureaucrats essentially said “everything the water touches is our jurisdiction…”
The rule allowed them to claim regulatory control over even “ephemeral” or “intermittent” water flows, meaning that even man-made ditches or patches of dry land that retain water only a few days a year are subject to the administrative control of this agency.
This would increase EPA jurisdiction over state lands by as much as 400%.
While the Trump administration wisely delayed the rule’s implementation until 2020, Congress needs to act to provide certainty that this rule will not go into effect. It was Congress that allowed this rule to come into being, and Congress needs to fix it.
When Congress passed the Clean Water Act of 1972, it granted ambiguous authority over the waterways of the United States to the EPA. In the kind of horrible lawmaking that often happens in Washington, D.C., the legislative branch gave up their lawmaking authority by setting a broad, vague standard and allowing an administrative agency - filled with unaccountable, unelected bureaucrats - to figure out the rest.
The mess that is WOTUS is a perfect example of this.
WOTUS was crafted by the EPA in a flawed - and actually illegal - process. Not only did the EPA disregard the comments of ranchers, farmers, and others who would be most affected by this rule, but the Government Accountability Office ruled that the EPA broke the law when advocating for support of this rule while it was being developed.
Additionally, water that is sourced on private property could require property owners to obtain EPA permits for routine actions such as landscaping, farming, or building on their own land. Many people that would be affected by this rule wouldn’t even be aware of it, and could be subject to thousands of dollars a day in fines.
This is why I attempted to attach a WOTUS repeal amendment to this week’s appropriations bill. This kind of policy attachment to an appropriation bill is not uncommon. Yet, despite the WOTUS repeal amendment having a recent history of bipartisan, majority support in Congress and actually passing in the House’s appropriation bill, 20 of my GOP colleagues joined with the majority of Democrats in voting to table the measure. This was done solely for political purposes and continues Congress’s pattern of legislative abdication.
While the King of Pride Rock may have authority to broadly claim governance of land unimpeded, the EPA does not have that right. It is Congress’s responsibility to make sure this does not go unchecked, and it is past time we enact legislation to repeal the expansive WOTUS rule.
