House chairman: $3.7B border request ‘too much’

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WASHINGTON (AP) — A key Republican said Friday that
President Barack Obama’s multibillion-dollar emergency request for the
border is too big to get through the House, as a growing number of
Democrats rejected policy changes Republicans are demanding as their
price for approving any money.
The developments indicated that
Obama faces an uphill climb as he pushes Congress to approve $3.7
billion to deal with tens of thousands of unaccompanied kids who’ve been
arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border from poor and increasingly violent
Central American nations. And they suggested that even as the children
keep coming, any final resolution is likely weeks away on Capitol Hill.
As
House members gathered Friday morning to finish up legislative business
for the week, Rep. Hal Rogers of Kentucky, chairman of the
Appropriations Committee, which controls spending, told reporters: "It’s
too much money. We don’t need it."
Rogers previously had sounded
open to the spending request for more immigration judges, detention
facilities, State Department programs and other items. He said his
committee would look at the parts of Obama’s request that would go for
immediate needs, but that others could be handled through Congress’
regular spending bills — though no final action is likely on those until
after the November midterm elections.
And asked whether the House would approve the spending package as-is, Rogers said "no."
White
House Press Secretary Josh Earnest responded by saying that "we’re open
to working with Democrats and Republicans in Congress to get this
done."
"The president has moved quickly to be very clear about
what specifically needs to be funded," Earnest said. "And we would like
to see Republicans back up their rhetoric with the kind of urgent action
that this situation merits."
Rogers spoke shortly after the
Congressional Hispanic Caucus convened a news conference to denounce
efforts to attach legal changes to the spending measure that would
result in returning the children home more quickly to El Salvador,
Honduras and Guatemala. Those countries account for most of the more
than 57,000 unaccompanied kids who’ve arrived since October.
Republicans
are demanding such changes, and White House officials also have
indicated support, while the House and Senate Democratic leaders left
the door open to them this week.
But key Senate Democrats are
opposed, and members of the all-Democratic Hispanic Caucus added their
strong objections Friday that sending the children home quickly could
put them at risk.
"I don’t know of a man or a woman in the
Congressional Hispanic Caucus who is going to vote to undermine the
rights of these children," said Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill. "It would be
unconscionable."
Gutierrez said the lawmakers would make that same case directly to Obama in a meeting next week.
Meanwhile
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson visited a detention facility in
Artesia, New Mexico, where he said: "Our message to those who come
illegally is we will send you back."
That’s something that may not
happen for years, if ever, under current circumstances, which is at the
heart of the debate over changing U.S. policy.
At issue is a 2008
law aimed at helping victims of human trafficking, which appears to be
contributing to the current crisis by ensuring court hearings for the
children now arriving from Central America. In practice, that often
allows them to stay in this country for years as their cases wend their
way through the badly backlogged immigration court system, and
oftentimes they never show up for their court dates.
Obama
administration officials along with Republican lawmakers want to change
the law so that Central American children can be treated the same way as
Mexican minors, who can be turned around quickly by Border Patrol
agents.
"If you want to stop the problem, treat the children
humanely and send them back. I guarantee you it will work," Senate
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Friday in a speech in
Louisville.
Democrats and advocacy groups say such a change would put the kids in jeopardy.
"We
will oppose this link even if it means the funding bill goes down,"
said Kevin Appleby, director of migration and refugee policy for the
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. If the changes go through, "They’ll
be sent back to their persecutors with no help whatsoever, and possibly
to their deaths."
The border controversy spilled over to a
gathering of the National Governors Association in Nashville, Tennessee,
where governors of both parties blamed a gridlocked Congress.
"Congress
needs to act," declared Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin, the group’s
Republican chairman. "They are children, so we want to treat them very
humanely, but we also have a lot of concerns for the health and wellness
of our citizens in our state."
___
Associated Press writer
Steve Peoples in Nashville, Tennessee, Bruce Schreiner in Louisville,
Kentucky, and Juan Carlos Llorca in Artesia, New Mexico, contributed to
this report.

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