Shaheen Urges DHS to Share Processing Best Practices With European Partners to Help Address Refugee Crisis

Press Release

Today, U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), the lead Democrat on both the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on European Affairs and the Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee, wrote to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Jeh Johnson urging the department to share best-practices for processing migrants developed on the U.S. Southwest border, with European allies struggling with the surge of Syrian refugees. Shaheen's recommendations follow the trip she led earlier this month to Europe where she was briefed on the Syrian refugee crisis, and a trip earlier this year to the U.S. border with Mexico where she was briefed by DHS officials on the surge of Central American migrants.

"The burden on these nations, their local communities and their infrastructure, is staggering, and that is why I am requesting you work to identify ways in which the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) can assist your counterparts in European nations bearing the weight of the refugee crisis, fully recognizing that there may be constraints to U.S. involvement," Shaheen writes. "…I know that DHS has developed proven techniques for receiving and processing large numbers of individuals. DHS officials from across the agency who dealt with the Southwest border surge have a tremendous level of expertise in matters such as verifying an individual's identity, registering family units together, and providing basic health screenings. These best practices could be shared with front-line nations in Europe struggling to handle thousands and thousands of arriving refugees each day."

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