House Republican leaders are hoping to pass legislation next week that would require the federal government to conduct a comprehensive analysis of threats coming across the southwestern U.S. border.
The Southwest Border Security Threat Assessment act, from freshman Rep. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., is a response to growing fears that Islamic State terrorists are looking to enter the U.S. from Mexico, and plot terrorist acts in any U.S. city they can reach. McSally said her bill would help Congress get a better handle on how real these threats are, and provide a needed update for border agents.
“The threats along our border have shifted significantly in the last few years, let alone over the last two decades,” McSally said when she offered the bill in February. “Our Border Patrol can’t do their job if they’re operating off of outdated information.”
Immigration has generally been a dead letter in the House for the last three years, when the Senate passed a reform bill that angered many Republicans. President Obama solidified the GOP position further with his executive actions on immigration in late 2014.
Obama’s move prompted then-House Speaker John Boehner to say Republicans had no reason to trust Obama on immigration, and that the issue wouldn’t come up at all.
Next week, however, the House will dip its toe back into the issue with McSally’s bill.
The legislation is nothing close to the “comprehensive” bill the Senate passed in 2013. But it could provide information Congress could use to work on the issue in the future.
Broadly, the bill would require the Department of Homeland Security to submit to Congress a complete threat analysis of the southwest border, and it would require DHS to come up with a strategic plan for better enforcing the border every five years.
Assuming it can become law, the next question might be how Republicans try to use the information generated by the assessment. Republicans have long made it clear that they prefer to work on border security before any discussion is held on whether and how to allow millions of illegal immigrants stay in the country.
On Friday, McSally’s bill was added to a House GOP leadership list of so-called “suspension” bills that are expected to come up next week. Suspension bills are generally non-controversial, and are passed after a shorter debate and with a two-thirds majority requirement for passage.
The bill has one Democratic co-sponsor, Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., and nine Republican co-sponsors.
The threat analysis would have to include an assessment of current and future terrorism and criminal threats from people trying to enter the U.S. illegally through Mexico. It would have to assess improvements needed to improve security between ports of entry along the border as well.
It assess state and local laws that make it harder to enforce the border, and include an estimate of the “current percentage of situational awareness” that DHS has of the border.
Importantly, the bill would also require DHS to bring back a now-expired metric to measure the government’s “operational control” of the border.
Once the threat analysis is released, DHS would have 180 days to put forward a Border Patrol Strategic Plan. That plan must include efforts to analyze border data more effectively, increase situational awareness, and detect terrorist threats and drugs. Depending on when the bill becomes law, the analysis might have to be submitted by the next administration.
An updated version of that plan would have to be presented to Congress every five years.
