Washington, DC – Today, House Republicans again will define themselves by their anti-immigrant extremism. The day includes the scheduled House Homeland Security Committee markup of Republicans’ “Border Reinforcement Act of 2023.” Also today, a House Judiciary Committee subcommittee will hold another in the GOP’s ongoing string of anti-immigrant hearings, again using their platform to mainstream nativist extremists.
Among the worst components of the House Homeland Security bill set for a Wednesday markup include provisions to:
- Add more chaos and inhumanity at the border, including by destroying legal pathways that alleviate border pressures: The GOP legislation seeks to end the use of the CBP One app or “any other similar program” – the key access point for the Biden administration’s new parole program that creates new legal pathways to the U.S. and alleviates pressures at the border. The legislation also would strip funding from DHS used to process migrants and asylum seekers who arrive between ports of entry – a provision that not only would violate the law, but add more chaos and inhumanity to the border.
- Throw more money at Trump’s wasteful and ineffective border wall: In his effort to build the border wall, Trump spent billions in taxpayer money to enrich cronies, trample on landowner rights and nature preserves, and stroke his own ego for MAGA rally call-and-responses. Yet the wall also was flat-out ineffective – breached more than 3,000 times per a 2022 Washington Post story. As we have noted, it’s a $15 billion border wall that can be cut through with a $15 dollar hand saw. The border wall remains the perfect encapsulation of the former president and the Trump-ified Republican Party – broken, corrupt, offensive and ineffective. And this legislation would restart its construction.
- Crack down on faith communities and nuns providing humanitarian support and battered women’s shelters: A provision in the GOP bill would bar any DHS funding for non-governmental organizations which provide “services for aliens who … have entered the United States.” Think of the organizations in the border region, including faith-based groups and nuns such as Sister Norma Pimentel, who offer shelter, food, or clothing assistance to vulnerable populations of people fleeing violence and desperation.
House Judiciary Committee continues to mainstream anti-immigrant extremists:
As if the Homeland Security bill markup wasn’t enough, a House GOP Judiciary subcommittee will follow their ugly markup of their own sweeping anti-asylum and anti-immigrant bill with a subcommittee hearing tomorrow. Again, the GOP will use its majority to elevate star witnesses who are far-right extremists. These include Jessica Vaughn, from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Read more in this blog post from America’s Voice on Jessica Vaughn and the other extremists witnesses: “GOP House Invites Another Member of a Hate Group to Congress”
According to Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice:
“The Republican Party’s extremism is again on full display —it’s about border walls and punitive crackdowns on faith-based service providers, mainstreaming hate groups and platforming white nationalism, while cutting safe and legal ways for immigrants to go through our legal processes. They are blocking solutions and opposing legal immigration pathways and even the money to process migrants at the border. It’s clear the GOP prefers the chaos and inhumanity of a broken immigration system over serious efforts to fix it.”
