Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2015

Floor Speech

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Ms. LOFGREN. Mr. Chairman, some claim the President's actions are unconstitutional. That is not true.

I submit for the Record a letter signed by 135 law professors and confirmed by four former chief counsels for Immigration about why his action was lawful.

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Ms. LOFGREN. I note also that a lawsuit is currently pending to challenge the constitutionality.

Why don't Republicans just wait and see what the judicial branch has to say, what they decide?

The amendments being offered are poison pills and should be defeated. The first amendment is meant to block all but one of the President's actions on immigration. This includes the temporary protection from deportation for parents of U.S. citizens and the expansion of temporary relief for people brought to the country as kids.

This would break apart families, hurt more communities, deport the parents of U.S. citizens, and send thousands of American children into foster care.

But the amendment does more damage. In the interest of time, I will touch on just a few examples. It prevents improving the provisional waiver of the 3-year and 10-year unlawful presence bars created by Congress in 1996 to prevent U.S. citizens from experiencing ``extreme hardship.'' Ironically, the changes the administration intends would actually make the waiver align more closely to what Congress enacted.

It would stop actions to help capitalize on the innovation of job-creating entrepreneurs and increase job opportunities. It would block initiatives designed to promote the integration of immigrants and to promote citizenship. The only action not blocked is a pay raise for ICE agents.

The second amendment would block further implementation of the 2012 DACA memo and any additional efforts to save DREAM Act kids from deportation. In the past, there was confusion about what amendments did. But this one is very clear. It is a straight up-or-down vote on whether to deport hundreds of thousands of young people who came forward, passed background checks, received DACA, and followed the rule. It would deport the DREAMers.

The third amendment looks reasonable at first, as it requires that those convicted of sex offenses and domestic violence be the highest priority for enforcement. But the point is, the President's actions already make those criminals a priority for deportation, and they are prohibited from getting any deportation relief.

The amendment is not only unnecessary, but it also endangers victims of domestic violence. How? It overturns the DHS policy of inquiry into whether a person convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence was actually the victim, not the perpetrators of the crime. This amendment is opposed by the National Task Force to End Sexual and Domestic Violence, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and law enforcement.

I will now place into the Record a letter from 14 sheriffs and police chiefs asking that we oppose the DeSantis amendment.

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Ms. LOFGREN. The final amendment also creates problems. It says that USCIS should adjudicate petitions of individuals in lawful status before adjudicating petitions of individuals in unlawful status. But that is too broad. There are many petitions filed by people in unlawful status that we would not want to delay: green cards for the wives and husbands of American citizens; requests for U visas and T visas from crime victims or sex-trafficking victims; immigrant visa petitions filed by domestic violence victims. These are all people who would be harmed by the amendment.

I would note that the fourth amendment is based on the falsehood that the President's immigration actions created an incentive for employers to hire deferred action recipients instead of American workers. This is simply not true.

Now, we need to have a serious conversation about immigration policy in the House, but threatening to shut down the Department of Homeland Security is not the way to do that. These amendments are foolish and a step backwards, and not funding DHS is dumb and dangerous.

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