Not all Republicans are thrilled with GOP Senators John Cornyn and Marco Rubio’s resolution calling on President Obama to take action on the border.
This week Cornyn (R-TX) and Rubio (R-FL) introduced a resolution “expressing the sense of the Senate that President Obama should take immediate action to mitigate the humanitarian crisis along the international border between the United States and Mexico involving unaccompanied migrant children and to prevent future crises.”
GOP staffers, however, tell Breitbart News that the resolution is inadequate, as it is too weak and fails to address the idea that the the humanitarian crisis at the border is actually a crisis of “lawlessness.”
The pair’s resolution enumerates five steps they believe the president should take on the problem, including to publicly declare that Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program will not apply to the new immigrants, publicly discourage people south of the border from sending their children to the U.S., “fully” enforce U.S. immigration law, provide resources to states dealing with the influx, and improve the security at Mexico’s southern border by working with Mexican and Central American officials.
According to the GOP staffers, the resolution fails on several counts.
“It is facially weaker than Hillary Clinton’s expressed position,” GOP staff told Breitbart News.
Last week the former secretary of state said that the U.S. needs “to send a clear message” and send the unaccompanied minors back to their home countries and reunite them with their families.
The staffers further criticized that the resolution does not “explicitly” call for the new arrivals to be deported and that “it appears to implicitly accept DACA.” DACA is short-hand for the President’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which shields certain undocumented immigrants from deportation and allows them to live and work in the U.S.
The resolution calls on Obama to “Publicly declare that his deferred action programs granting relief from immigration enforcement will not apply to unaccompanied migrant children currently arriving in the United States after illegally crossing our international borders” and “begin fully enforcing United States immigration laws.
Neither Rubio’s nor Cornyn’s office immediately responded to requests for comment.
Since October, more than 52,000 unaccompanied minors have been detained illegally crossing the southwest border, the vast majority of whom are from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. By the end of the fiscal year, the number is expected to reach 90,000, a 1,381% increase since 2011.
The administration and Democrats have argued that the influx is due to violence, poverty, and misinformation about America’s laws in their home countries. Republicans have pointed to the Obama administration’s failure to enforce the laws, and Customs and Border Patrol officials have said most of the children crossing the border alone say they came because they think they can stay.
House Republicans passed an amendment last year to defund DACA.