House Democrats negotiating a border security deal with Republicans said Wednesday they have written a plan that leaves out President Trump’s demand for a wall or barrier along the southern border.
“If you are asking if there is any money for a border wall, there is not,” said Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Calif., a top appropriator and member of the panel, said.
Roybal-Allard was among a bipartisan group of 17 House and Senate lawmakers who met for the first time Wednesday in an effort to strike a deal on border security and federal funding by a Feb. 15 deadline.
The leader of the group, House Appropriations Chairwoman Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., said she is not ruling out wall funding as the negotiations proceed but suggested Democrats for now will stick to their view that a border wall is unnecessary and that other enhancements, such as technology, would be more effective.
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“We are open to everyone’s facts and figures but I can assure you we are going to be talking about facts,” Lowey said. “Everything is on the table.”
The main sticking point is funding for a southern border wall, which President Trump said is required for his signature on any funding bill.
Details of the Democratic plan prepared by the House Appropriations subcommittee on Homeland Security have yet to be released. But Roybal-Allard said the plan would leave out wall funding and instead pay for 1,000 new Customs and Border Protection personnel and new equipment to scan vehicles for drugs as they travel into the United States.
Instead of a wall, the bill would deploy “cutting edge technology along the border.” The plan would also pay for new CBP air and marine operations as well as enhancements to port security.
Roybal-Allard, a critic of President Trump’s assessment that illegal immigration at the border is a crisis, said the plan House Democrats will bring to the negotiations will add funding to address “the only real crisis that is at the border which is not a border security crisis but a humanitarian one.”
The plan would reduce detention beds and enhance the ability of border agents to “meet the needs” of illegal immigrants they take into custody on the border. It would expand the Obama-era family case management program that connects illegal immigrants with legal help and housing in the United States, rather than keeping them in detention until a later court hearing.
Roybal-Allard said President Trump’s proposal to spend $5.7 billion on a border wall would prevent funding for critical security needs, including a Coast Guard icebreaker for use in Arctic waters, where the lack of U.S. presence poses a national security threat.
House and Senate negotiators who met Wednesday adjourned after delivering opening remarks and said they are optimistic they can reach a deal despite persistent differences over wall funding.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby, R-Ala., a top negotiator, said the next step involves congressional staff working to begin drafting a compromise plan.
The next meeting has not been scheduled and Lowey did not rule out a trip to the border for negotiators to talk to border patrol agents and assess the situation firsthand.
“We can do this if we can work together,” Shelby said. “If we continue to be polarized, we are going to be right back to where we were.”
But Republican negotiators are pushing for a variety of border security enhancements, including money for a barrier or wall.
“Technology is important, but I think fences and other things are important, too,” Shelby said after the group met Wednesday.
