WASHINGTON -- Outlines of a possible compromise that would more quickly deport minors arriving from Central America emerged Thursday as part of President Barack Obama's $3.7 billion emergency request to address the immigration crisis on the nation's southern border.
Republicans demanded speedier deportations, which the White House initially had supported but left out of its proposal after complaints from immigrant advocates and some Democrats. On Thursday, the top House and Senate Democrats pointedly left the door open to the Republicans.
"It's not a deal-breaker," said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. "Let them have their face-saver. But let us have the resources to do what we have to do." Her spokesman Drew Hammill later clarified that any changes "must ensure due process for these children."
In the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said: "I'm not going to block anything. Let's see what comes to the floor."
But opposition arose late in the day from key Democratic senators, suggesting battles ahead before any deal could be struck.
"I can assure you that I will fight tooth and nail changes in the Trafficking Victims Protection Act," Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said at a hearing on the situation, referring to the law Republicans want to change.
Noting that the arriving migrants include young girls trying to escape sex violence and gangs, Leahy said, "I'm not sure Americans all really feel we should immediately send them back."
Reid and Pelosi made their comments as House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., both said they didn't want to give Obama a "blank check" to deal with the crisis of tens of thousands of unaccompanied children arriving at the Texas border, many fleeing gangs and drawn by rumors they would be able to stay in the U.S.
Obama has expressed his "willingness to work with Republicans on this," White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters in Austin, Texas, where Obama was raising money for the Democratic National Committee.
Boehner and McConnell indicated policy changes would be necessary to win their support.
"We want to make sure we actually get the right tools to help fix the problem," McConnell said. Obama "needs to work with us to get the right policy into effect."
The developments came as Obama's Homeland Security secretary, Jeh Johnson, defended the emergency spending request at a hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee. He said that without the money, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol agencies would both run out of money in the next two months, and the Homeland Security Department "would need to divert significant funds from other critical programs just to maintain operations."
At issue is a law approved in 2008. Passed to give protection to sex trafficking victims, it requires court hearings for migrant young people who arrive in this country from "noncontiguous" countries -- anywhere other than Mexico or Canada.
Because of backlogs in the immigration court system, the result in the current crisis is that children streaming in from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala are released to relatives or others in the U.S. with notices to appear at long-distant court hearings that many of them never will attend.
Republicans want the government to have the authority to treat Central American children the same way as minors from Mexico, who can be removed quickly unless they convince Border Patrol that they have a fear of return that merits additional screening.
"I think clearly we would probably want the language similar to what we have with Mexico," Boehner said.
White House officials have said they support such changes and indicated last week that they would be offering them along with the emergency spending request. But immigration advocates objected strongly, saying children would be denied legal protections, and the White House has not yet made a formal proposal.
Asked Thursday about the issue, Johnson said he supported changing the law to treat children from Central American nations the same as those from Mexico.
"We want the flexibility in the current situation to have that discretion," he said.
But in response to concerns voiced by Leahy and Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, Johnson insisted that the children still would be protected.
"A request for discretion, as long as I'm secretary, means a request for the ability to do the right thing," Johnson said.
The comment didn't quiet Democrats' concerns.
"You want flexibility. There's danger in flexibility," Harkin said. "The single most important thing is to take care of these kids."
Advocates said they remained strongly opposed to such policy changes and expressed anger that after comprehensive immigration legislation failed to advance in Congress this year, lawmakers may be headed toward a vote on deporting minors more quickly.
"They weren't able to get immigration reform done in this Congress and this is going to be the only piece of immigration that gets done, a bill that says we're going to deport children fleeing violence faster," said Marielena Hincapie, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center. "If Democrats can't stand up to this and be the party that's protecting children and refugees, it's a really sad day for the country."
In Washington, Arizona's Republican senators, John McCain and Jeff Flake, and their Texas counterparts, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, spent an hour on the Senate floor Wednesday denouncing the Obama administration for not having stronger border-control policies. They said they would favor a revision of the 2008 law.
"The only thing that's going to stop these children from coming is if their parents see planeloads of them coming back to the country of origin," McCain told reporters Thursday.
But Durbin said the Central American countries have "no law enforcement to speak of. They literally shove the garbage in the middle of streets so people can go through it rather than starve to death. And to think that we're now returning children to that. ... Let's take care that we don't send them back into a deadly situation."
On Monday, Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia said he supports a bill to speed deporting the children. "It's the simplest, easiest, quickest way" to address the crisis, he said.
Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu, chairman of the spending panel that oversees the border patrol's budget, said dealing with delays in deportation hearings is her top priority. She didn't say whether she backed repealing the 2008 law.
"Until that gets solved, I am not going to move on to other issues," she said. Landrieu faces a tough re-election contest in November in a state Obama lost in 2012.
Reid said the children should be "treated as humanely as humanly possible," but he pledged not to block any legislation from the floor. Pelosi referred to herself Wednesday as a "lioness" when it came to caring for the young aliens.
"Just don't mess with the children," she said. "You want to talk about contiguous, noncontiguous, you can talk about it all day. But give us the money to deal with it."
More than 57,000 unaccompanied children have arrived since October even as tens of thousands more have arrived traveling as families, mostly mothers with their children.
Many are trying to reunite with family members and to escape a spike in violence in their countries, but they also report hearing rumors that once here, they would be allowed to stay. Republicans blame Obama policies aimed at curbing deportations of aliens brought into the country illegally as children for contributing to those rumors, something Obama administration officials have largely rejected.
The situation has complicated the already rancorous debate over remaking the nation's immigration laws at a moment when Obama has declared legislative efforts to do so dead and announced plans to proceed on his own executive authority to change the flawed system where he can.
McCain said he and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham are talking with New York Sen. Charles Schumer, the chamber's third-ranking Democrat, about resuming talks over a comprehensive immigration plan once the border emergency is under control.
Meanwhile, Johnson today will visit a temporary immigration detention center in southeastern New Mexico and meet with officials in Texas about the ongoing humanitarian alien crisis, the Homeland Security Department said Thursday.
In Texas, Gov. Rick Perry again visited the Mexico border as he continued to hammer Obama for failing to do so.
Perry tweeted Thursday that he was in the Rio Grande Valley, including pictures of himself near a helicopter and at a border security meeting in Weslaco.
The governor has criticized Obama for failing to come to the border amid the flood of unaccompanied children crossing into Texas.
Obama discussed the border with Perry in Dallas on Wednesday and spoke about the economy in Austin on Thursday. But Obama has resisted calls from Republicans and some Texas Democrats -- including gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis -- to get a first-hand look at the border.
Information for this article was contributed by Alicia A. Caldwell, Erica Werner, Julie Pace, Russell Contreras and Paul J. Weber of The Associated Press; by David Nakamura and Ed O'Keefe of The Washington Post; and by Heidi Przybyla of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 07/11/2014