WASHINGTON -- The House on Tuesday passed a $4.5 billion emergency aid package to care for thousands of migrant families and unaccompanied children detained after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.
The bill passed along party lines after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi quelled a mini-revolt by progressives and Hispanic lawmakers who sought significant changes to the legislation. Provisions added to the bill Tuesday were more modest than what those lawmakers had sought, but the urgent need for the funding appeared to outweigh any lingering concerns.
All four members of Arkansas' delegation voted against the measure.
The 230-195 vote sets up a showdown with the Republican-led Senate, which may try instead to force Democrats to send President Donald Trump a different, and broadly bipartisan, companion measure in the coming days as the chambers race to wrap up the legislation by the end of the week.
"The Senate has a good bill. Our bill is much better," Pelosi, D-Calif., told her Democratic colleagues in a meeting Tuesday morning, according to a senior Democratic aide who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the private session.
"We are ensuring that children have food, clothing, sanitary items, shelter and medical care. We are providing access to legal assistance. And we are protecting families because families belong together," Pelosi said in a subsequent floor speech.
The bill contains more than $1 billion to shelter and feed migrants detained by the Border Patrol and almost $3 billion to care for unaccompanied migrant children who are turned over to the Department of Health and Human Services.
It seeks to mandate improved standards of care at the Health and Human Services Department's "influx shelters" that house children waiting to be placed with sponsors such as family members in the U.S.
Both House and Senate bills would ensure funding could not be shifted to Trump's border wall and would block information on sponsors of migrant children from being used to deport them. Trump also would be denied additional funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention beds.
"The President's cruel immigration policies that tear apart families and terrorize communities demand the stringent safeguards in this bill to ensure these funds are used for humanitarian needs only -- not for immigration raids, not detention beds, not a border wall," said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Nita Lowey, D-N.Y.
The White House has threatened to veto the House bill, saying it would hamstring the administration's border security efforts, and the Senate's top Republican suggested Tuesday that the House should simply accept the Senate measure -- which received only a single "nay" vote during a committee vote last week.
"The idea here is to get a [presidential] signature, so I think once we can get that out of the Senate, hopefully on a vote similar to the one in the Appropriations Committee, I'm hoping that the House will conclude that's the best way to get the problem solved, which can only happen with a signature," said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
A handful of GOP conservatives went to the White House to try to persuade Trump to reject the Senate bill and demand additional funding for immigration enforcement, such as overtime for border agents and money for detention facilities run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to a top GOP lawmaker who demanded anonymity to discuss a private meeting. Trump was expected to reject the advice.
House Democrats seeking the changes met late Monday with Pelosi, and lawmakers emerging from the Tuesday morning caucus meeting were generally supportive of the legislation.
Congress plans to leave Washington in a few days for a weeklong July 4 recess, and pressure is intense to wrap up the legislation before then. Agencies are about to run out of money, and failure to act could bring a swift political rebuke and accusations of ignoring the plight of migrant children.
The Border Patrol reported apprehending nearly 133,000 people last month -- including many Central American families -- as monthly totals have begun topping 100,000 for the first time since 2007. Federal agencies involved in immigration have reported being overwhelmed, depleting their budgets and housing large numbers of detainees in structures meant for handfuls of people.
A Section on 06/26/2019