President Trump is to blame for the humanitarian crisis along the southern border, while the GOP is blindly following the president in a cult-like fashion, top Democrats argued Tuesday.
“We are urging our colleagues on the other side of the aisle to show some decency, show some strength and stop acting like you are part of a cult,” Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries, New York, said of GOP lawmakers.
House Democrats want the GOP to support a $4.5 billion emergency spending bill that imposes new requirements and restrictions on how U.S. border officials treat the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who have been apprehended along the southern border in the past few months.
The measure would leave additional money for Immigration and Customs Enforcement for more detention beds and would guarantee services such as translators for illegal immigrants.
The House GOP is rejecting the Democrats’ measure in favor of a bipartisan Senate bill that excludes the new requirements and restrictions and maintains the ICE funding.
“What matters is how we treat the least, the lost and the left behind and that includes God’s children who are on that Southwest border, who are being treated by this great nation with indecency,” Jeffries said. “The president should be ashamed of himself for using the children as political pawns.”
Democrats, meanwhile, blame the president for the current border crisis, despite assertions from top homeland security officials that U.S. asylum laws are serving as a magnet for thousands of Central American migrant families to try to gain entry.
“It became a crisis because the administration is intent on eroding asylum protections and incarcerating as many people as possible,” Rep. Veronica Escobar, a Democrat who represents the El Paso, Texas area, said Tuesday.
The House is expected to take up the border money measure today, while the Senate will vote on its bipartisan measure this week.
The two chambers will then have to work out a compromise deal on the two measures.
