Members of the U.S. House and Senate from Texas and Arizona have introduced a measure they call the "Bipartisan Border Solutions Act." The group toured the border Wednesday in McAllen.
"This is a unique part of our state and part of our nation," says Senator John Cornyn (R-TX). "Obviously, we've got some huge challenges."
Cornyn introduced the bill in the U.S. Senate along with Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ). The bill was introduced in the U.S. House by Texas Representatives Henry Cuellar (D-28) and Tony Gonzales (R-23).
"America is built on immigrants, and we're also a nation of laws," Gonzales says. "This sensible piece of legislation tries to tackle both of that."
The bill has been endorsed by law enforcement groups including the Major Cities Chiefs Association, National Border Patrol Council, Southwestern Border Sheriffs' Coalition and Texas Border Sheriff's Coalition. Cornyn says the National Association of Evangelicals and Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission support the measure as well.
Business groups including the Texas Association of Business, U.S. Chamber of Commerce and U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce also support the bill.
"We want our border to be back open again, legitimate trade and traffic," Cornyn says. "Retail businesses right here in the region depend on that cross-border traffic."
The bill would add 150 immigration judges and 300 asylum and border patrol officers. A complete list of items included in the bill from Cornyn's office:
--Establishes at least 4 regional processing centers in high-traffic Border Patrol sectors to properly handle the influx of migrants along the southwest border and improve interagency coordination.
--Creates pilot programs to facilitate fairer and more efficient credible fear determinations and asylum decisions, while ensuring fairness in proceedings through provisions to protect access to counsel, language translation services, and legal orientations.
--Establishes prioritized docketing of migrants' immigration court cases during irregular migration influx events to deliver legal certainty for migrants., and disincentivize would-be migrants with weak asylum claims from making the treacherous journey to the southwest border.
--Expands legal orientation programming and translation services, and protects access to counsel for migrants.
--Implements new protections for unaccompanied migrant children released to sponsors in the United States, including regular follow-up and absolute bars on placement with persons convicted of certain crimes, such as sex offenders and child abusers.
--Increases staffing to better handle irregular migration influx events, including 150 new Immigration Judge teams, 300 asylum officers, ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations staff, ICE litigation teams, CBP officers, and Border Patrol processing coordinators.
--Improves DHS coordination with NGOs and local governments to prevent release of migrants into small communities that are poorly equipped to handle the influx of a large number of migrants.
--Improves DHS, DOJ, and HHS reporting to Congress to support future legislative efforts in areas in which bipartisan agreement does not yet exist.
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