House kills bill on immigration, bares GOP rift; half of Arkansas’ legislators vote for it

Rep. Bruce Westerman (left), R-Ark., and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California walk to the House floor on Capitol Hill before Wednesday’s vote on the immigration bill. Westerman voted against the measure.
Rep. Bruce Westerman (left), R-Ark., and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California walk to the House floor on Capitol Hill before Wednesday’s vote on the immigration bill. Westerman voted against the measure.

WASHINGTON -- The House resoundingly rejected an immigration overhaul bill Wednesday, despite a last-minute plea from President Donald Trump, as internal divisions in the Republican ranks continued to hobble legislative efforts to protect young people living in the U.S. without legal status.

The bill was killed 301-121, with nearly half of Republicans opposing the measure. The depth of GOP opposition was seen as a rebuff of House leaders, who'd postponed the vote twice and proposed changes in hopes of driving up the vote tally on a measure that seemed doomed from the start.

Even if it passed, the bill rejected Wednesday would have been dead on arrival in the closely divided Senate, where Democrats have enough votes to kill it. House Democrats voted unanimously against it.

The defeat provided the latest display of the Republican Party's disunity in Congress on immigration. And it highlighted the continuing inability of the House and Senate to resolve the fate of young people who were brought to the country as children and now live in the U.S. without legal status, often called Dreamers. Many of those people have been shielded from deportation under a program enacted under President Barack Obama -- the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA -- but Trump moved last year to end the program.

Hours before Wednesday's vote, Trump took to Twitter and implored the House -- in all capital letters -- to pass the bill, which would have provided more than $23 billion for border security, including for his promised wall, while keeping families together at the border and providing a path to citizenship for those protected under the deferred-action program.

But coming just days after Trump had told Congress to forget about immigration until after the midterm elections, his last-minute change of mind did not prove persuasive. On the eve of the vote, the bill appeared all but certain to be heading toward defeat, in part some said because of the mixed messages from the president.

"There's still a divide, and you could see it in the vote last week, and this week there's probably a little bit more of a divide," Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., the majority whip, conceded Wednesday morning on Fox & Friends.

The bill considered Wednesday would have made significant changes to the immigration system and generally adhered to the president's stated requirements for any overhaul. It would have limited family-based immigration and it would have eliminated the diversity visa lottery, which admits people from countries that do not send many people to the United States.

Despite the painstaking negotiations among Republicans to try to arrive at a broad immigration overhaul, the resulting compromise still ran into trouble with conservatives. It has been derided on the right as "amnesty" for offering a pathway to citizenship for the deferred-action recipients.

Conservative Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, who voted "no," said lawmakers "couldn't go home and face their constituents and say 'I just gave you the largest amnesty ever without really a guarantee of enforcement.'"

But Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., who backed the measure, said, "Some people can't get to yes no matter what you do, and some people are just afraid of the issue."

Rep. Carlos Curbelo, R-Fla., and Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Calif., from competitive districts with large numbers of Hispanic voters, helped force House Speaker Paul Ryan to hold immigration votes.

After the vote, Curbelo said too many lawmakers "simply lacked the courage" to help "victims of a broken immigration system." Denham said the vote made it "very obvious that we need to have a bipartisan solution" -- an avenue that the approach of campaign season makes highly unlikely.

Arkansas' delegation split on the immigration legislation.

Rep. French Hill, a Republican from Little Rock, and Rep. Steve Womack, a Republican from Rogers, voted "yes."

Rep. Rick Crawford, a Republican from Jonesboro, and Rep. Bruce Westerman, a Republican from Hot Springs, voted "no."

In a written statement, Womack said Congress had "kicked the can down the road on solving for this important issue yet again."

"The need for immigration reform in America has become more than just a talking point; it is an essential undertaking for our country. And until we address the pressing issues of border security, interior enforcement, and visa reform, our fractured system as it exists today will continue to manifest itself in heartbreaking ways," Womack said.

Hill portrayed the legislation as a balanced solution that would strengthen the borders while also addressing the needs of Dreamers and separated families.

"Since coming to Congress, I have stood with the many central Arkansans who also believe that our immigration system is broken and in urgent need of repair. That is why I urge my colleagues in the House to take action and fix it instead of blocking these bills from moving forward," Hill said in a written statement.

CLOCK TICKING

Republicans in the House are now likely to turn their focus to narrower legislation that would keep families together by lifting a court-ordered, 20-day limit on how long children can be detained.

Trump last week issued an executive order reversing the family-separation policy, but around 2,000 children remain separated from their relatives.

Senators are also trying to craft a bipartisan plan.

But with the Fourth of July approaching and lawmakers close to returning home for a recess, it was not clear how quickly a narrower measure might move forward.

A federal judge in California issued a nationwide injunction late Tuesday temporarily stopping the Trump administration from separating children from their parents at the border.

In his order, U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw, an appointee of President George W. Bush, said all families must be reunited within 30 days, and children under 5 must be reunited with their parents within 14 days. He also issued a nationwide injunction against further family separations, unless the parent is deemed unfit or doesn't want to be with the child.

Asked about the injunction, Trump offered no complaint, saying, "We believe the families should be together also so there's not a lot to fight."

But it remained unclear Wednesday how the administration would meet that deadline, given the amount of red tape and confusion that has hung over the reunification process.

The Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement is taking an average of 57 days to place children in its care with adult sponsors -- far longer than the time now allotted by the judge.

The Health and Human Services Department, which is in charge of the separated children, referred questions Wednesday to the Justice Department, which in turn said it was up to Congress to deal with the border situation.

"Last night's court decision makes it even more imperative that Congress finally act to give federal law enforcement the ability to simultaneously enforce the law and keep families together," the Justice Department said in a statement Wednesday morning.

"Without this action by Congress, lawlessness at the border will continue, which will only lead to predictable results: more heroin and fentanyl pushed by Mexican cartels plaguing our communities, a surge in MS-13 gang members, and an increase in the number of human trafficking prosecutions," the Justice Department statement said.

The government had urged Sabraw not to grant the nationwide injunction, saying Trump's order, which followed days of bipartisan outcry, had resolved the concerns animating the suit.

The court said it did not. Instead, it found that the zero-tolerance policy, begun in early May, along with the executive order and a subsequent fact sheet issued by the Department of Homeland Security outlining the process of removal, marked a sharp departure from "measured and ordered governance, which is central to the concept of due process enshrined in our Constitution."

The judge stated bluntly: "The unfortunate reality is that under the present system, migrant children are not accounted for with the same efficiency and accuracy as property."

Meanwhile, the Health and Human Services inspector general's office announced Wednesday that it would be opening a wide-ranging review of conditions at shelters for the detained children focused on safety and health-related concerns, as well as the training and qualifications of federal contractors who are supposed to ensure the well-being of children temporarily in federal custody.

Spokesman Tesia Williams said allegations of mistreatment or abuse would be referred to appropriate authorities to investigate as soon as possible. The Health and Human Services Department is caring for about 12,000 children, including some 2,000 who arrived at the southwest border with at least one parent.

The department's Administration for Children and Families also said in a statement that it was "focused on continuing to provide quality services and care" to minors being held in Office of Refugee Resettlement-funded facilities and reunifying children with relatives or appropriate sponsors.

"Reunification is always the ultimate goal of those entrusted with the care of unaccompanied alien children, and we are working toward that for those unaccompanied alien children currently in our custody," it said.

But Robert Carey, who led the refugee office during the Obama administration, said the agency will likely struggle to link children with their parents, especially if parents are still detained or have already been deported.

Historically, children in the refugee office's care arrive alone in the U.S., with personal documents or a contact for a relative already in the country, making it easier to place them with a sponsor. But there have been widespread reports of children being taken from their parents unexpectedly, and where neither side knows where the other is.

"I see all the problems. I don't know what the plan or the level of coordination is to overcome those," Carey said.

Scott Lloyd, head of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, said minors in the office's custody have access to education, recreation, mental health, health care, and counseling and that, in every case, parents' and children's records are linked.

"The parents and children are able to communicate as much as possible," which includes twice-weekly phone calls, he said.

In his order, Sabraw was highly critical of the reunification process, arguing that administration officials were trying to reunite only kids and parents who were being removed from the country. When parents were not immediately placed into removal proceedings, it was essentially up to the parent to try to locate a child.

[U.S. immigration: Data visualization of selected immigration statistics, U.S. border map]

"The facts set forth before the court portray reactive governance -- responses to address a chaotic circumstance of the government's own making," he wrote.

Information for this article was contributed by Thomas Kaplan of The New York Times; by Alan Fram, Lisa Mascaro, Jill Colvin, Colleen Long, Nomaan Merchant, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Ken Thomas, Catherine Lucey, Kevin Freking and Matthew Daly of The Associated Press; by Isaac Stanley-Becker, Devlin Barrett and Nick Miroff of The Washington Post; and by Frank E. Lockwood of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

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AP/MATT YORK

A woman who came to the U.S. from El Salvador holds a package containing batteries and accessories for the monitoring bracelet on her left ankle Tuesday at the Annunciation House, a facility for migrants and the homeless in El Paso, Texas. Dozens of parents are staying at the home as they wait to be reunited with their children.

A Section on 06/28/2018

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