Clashes tying up border-funds bill, Boehner says

WASHINGTON -- House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, raised doubts Thursday that Congress will be able to fulfill President Barack Obama's emergency funding request to address the growing influx of illegal aliens crossing the U.S.-Mexico border before lawmakers leave Washington for their summer recess.

Asked about the prospect of approving Obama's $3.7 billion request before a five-week break begins Aug. 1, Boehner said, "I would certainly hope so, but I don't have as much optimism as I would like to have."

Boehner said no decision has been made yet by his leadership team on how to proceed on the issue. A "border working group" of Republican lawmakers is due to give Boehner a set of policy recommendations on how to deal with the crisis, but has not yet said when the lawmakers will deliver the proposals.

Asked why he has less optimism than before that lawmakers will be able to move quickly on the subject, Boehner said, "There's just been some comments made by our colleagues across the aisle that are going to make this much more difficult to deal with."

That was a reference to growing opposition among Democrats to changing a 2008 law that grants extra protections to youths from Central American countries who cross the border. Republicans and some Democrats have said it will be necessary to tweak the law in order to fulfill Obama's request for emergency funding.

"I don't know how Congress can send more money to the border to begin to mitigate the problem if you don't do something about the '08 law that is being abused. And it's being abused," Boehner said at his weekly news conference.

Shortly before Boehner spoke, the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee reiterated that it would be not acceptable to change the 2008 law.

Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., made his comments at the start of a committee hearing on the border crisis.

"If you flee 2,000 miles and you were told by the gangs join or die, if you're raped and you flee 2,000 miles not to ever experience that tragic and traumatic set of circumstances, you don't come with anything but the clothing on your back, and when you get here to the United States, you're going to need a reasonable period of time to be able to produce the facts to make that case that doesn't come with you," Menendez said. "I understand the desire to accelerate the process, but accelerating without due process is not acceptable."

Menendez and other members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus met with Obama at the White House on Wednesday to convey their opposition to changing the law. During the meeting, Obama told the group that he wanted "to find a way to ensure due process but also speed things up" in the processing of young migrants, according to another lawmaker in the room who asked not to be identified in order to frankly describe the president's opinions.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and other Democratic lawmakers have said in recent days that they oppose changing the law.

During the Senate hearing, officials from the Justice and State departments said more than 50,000 unaccompanied children from Central American countries have been apprehended along the U.S.-Mexico border so far this year. Nearly three-quarters are boys between the ages of 15 and 17, the officials said.

Citing data showing a dramatic increase in illegal border crossings over the past two years, Republican senators pressed the witnesses on whether steps by the Obama administration -- including the 2012 decision allowing some illegal aliens who came to the United States as children to get two-year work permits and a deferral of deportation proceedings -- has driven the influx.

But the witnesses said the ongoing migrations north are due chiefly to raging drug-related violence that is fueling economic instability in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

Thomas Shannon, a State Department official with oversight of the border crisis, said the current political debate over immigration "does not have an impact" on the recent influx. He said that U.S. officials have always stressed to foreigners that they will be deported if they illegally cross the border.

"Children have been deported and will be deported," he said.

Bruce Swartz, a deputy assistant attorney general responsible for prosecuting drug and immigration crimes, said Central American drug cartels and human smugglers "are marketing misunderstandings about how U.S. immigration law will work."

A Section on 07/18/2014

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