25 Jun 2019 Congress Must Move Forward on a Supplemental Border Deal: Here is What is Needed in Immigration

As Congress considers a supplemental spending bill that will fund humanitarian relief at the US border, BPC Action urges engagement across the aisle in both the House and Senate to address this critical situation and supports Congress sending a bipartisan border supplemental bill to the President’s desk.

BPC’s director of immigration and cross-border policy Theresa Cardinal Brown details:

What’s Happening:
– The arrival of thousands of migrants at a time, overflowing CBP, ICE, HHS and Border Patrol facilities, has created a humanitarian crisis that has resulted in unsafe, unsanitary conditions and tragic deaths.
– All sides need to come together immediately and commit the necessary resources and capabilities to manage this situation and provide for the basic human rights of everyone involved.
– If Congress and the administration fail to come to an agreement, the situation at the border will only deteriorate. Cutting funding to these agencies now will not punish the agencies or the administration: it will punish the migrants.

What’s Needed:
– Both the House and the Senate have put forward solid bills, allocating necessary resources to create appropriate shelters and facilities for the care of families and children, provide medical care and assistance, and for the sanitary, food and health needs of migrants.
– Additionally, both the House and Senate bills contain money for FEMA grants to jurisdictions at the border that have put forward their own tax dollars to assist with the needs of the migrants arriving in their cities, as well as the non-profit organizations managing shelters and serving these communities.
– More can and should be done as Congress considers other measures, including how to improve processing and create a “surge capacity” in our immigration and asylum system, and how to better coordinate across the federal government to address this extraordinary migration event. We need an “Immigration FEMA” response system similar to what we have for natural disasters.

Click here to find out about a path forward for an Immigration FEMA. For the latest on the migrant asylum process, click here.