There they go again. You’d think that with Republicans still licking their wounds after a humiliating defeat in their internal battle to tie immigration action to DHS funding, they’d send their anti-immigrant obsession off on a small vacation.
You’d think that, but you’d be wrong.
Instead, both chambers of the Republican Congress are continuing their crusade against immigrant families this week, with no less than six hearings on immigration scheduled through Thursday — and three of them alone today.
This would be great news if these hearings were focused on finding humane, permanent relief for immigrant parents, DREAMers, and the millions of others waiting for Congress to finally fix our nation’s broken immigration system.
But instead, these hearings are focused on further pushing the GOP’s extremist agenda at the human cost of millions of immigrant families.
These hearings play out against the ongoing effort of confirm Loretta Lynch as Attorney General, which Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Jeff Sessions (R-AL) have convinced their GOP caucus to turn into referendum on immigration.
One of today’s hearings, “Securing the Southwest Border: Perspectives from Beyond the Beltway,” is focusing on a border bill that has already been slammed by faith and community groups as yet another attempt to further militarize border communities “and trample on the rights of tens of millions of residents who call border communities home.”
One of witnesses for the Republicans today, Border Patrol union leader Chris Cabrera, has in fact been a popular go-to man for extremists like Alabama’s Jeff Sessions. Sessions is probably ecstatic that Cabrera is already feeding the right some red meat, with an early report from the notoriously anti-immigrant FAIR noting Cabrera has stated flat-out this morning that the border is not secure.
But even Fox News would tell him that’s just not so.
Things aren’t much better in the House, either. Republicans have “The Fiscal Costs of the President’s Executive Actions on Immigration” scheduled for today, too, which will no doubt ignore the fact that the states have hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues to gain from immigration action — even the states like Texas who ran to Judge Hanen to issue a stop to the President’s immigration program.
Republicans promised “responsible governance” after taking Congress. But with these upcoming hearings, especially in light of their DHS debacle, it looks like we’re getting everything but.
