House Republicans wasted the nation’s time this week by passing what’s essentially a “ICE Is Nice” resolution, a useless, political stunt of a vote that helped no one, except their own desperate butts as the November elections approach. It’s a shame, because there are a million and one crises that Donald Trump has created, and a million and one crises complicit House Republicans are enabling by doing nothing.
House Republicans could’ve introduced and voted on legislation like that authored by Sens. Kamala Harris of California, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, which immediately reunites all migrant families that have been separated at the border under the Trump administration’s barbaric “zero tolerance” policy, but they didn’t.
Instead, officials continue to slow-walk a court-ordered deadline to reunite thousands of separated kids, who continue to wait in abusive conditions where every day is another day of added trauma. Adding to the chaos, is that Trump wants to now jail families together. House Republicans could’ve voted to reunite them with their families in freedom, but they didn’t.
House Republicans could’ve voted on legislation introduced by Congress members Lucille Roybal-Allard of California and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida putting vulnerable Dreamers on a path to citizenship, but they didn’t. Very soon, it’ll be a year since Donald Trump rescinded the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and six months since the March 5 deadline for Congress to act.
But since then, Paul Ryan has helped sabotage a discharge petition that would’ve forced a floor vote on permanent protections, like the bipartisan DREAM Act, instead continuing to leave DACA recipients and their families living from court decision to court decision, and now most recently at the mercy of an anti-immigrant Texas judge who could soon help Trump kill it for good. House Republicans could’ve voted to protect them, but they didn’t.
House Republicans could’ve vote on legislation introduced by Congress member Nydia Velázquez of New York putting Temporary Protected Status (TPS) recipients on a path to legalization, but they didn’t. Despite senior officials warning that conditions remained dire in these countries, Trump, with the help of white supremacist Stephen Miller, terminated protections for immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador, Honduras and several other nations.
Now, hundreds of thousands of immigrants who had permission to live and work here—some for decades—will soon be deportable. They own homes and businesses, and they are integral parts of their communities and work industries. These immigrants, parents to almost 250,000 U.S. citizen kids, may be forced to uproot their families to countries that are no longer their own, or be forced to go underground. House Republicans could’ve voted to protect these families, but they didn’t.
House Republicans could’ve voted on legislation introduced by Sen. Kamala Harris of California and Congress member Pramila Jayapal of Washington state reining in rampant verbal, sexual and physical abuse of detainees while they are in immigration detention, but they didn’t.
According to advocacy group Freedom for Immigrants last year, “Homeland Security received a total of 33,126 complaints of sexual and/or physical abuse from January 2010 to July 2016. Of those, only 225—.07 percent—have been investigated.” One 19-year-old asylum seeker and mom who was sexually abused by a guard said she felt powerless. “I didn’t know how to refuse,” she said, “because he told me that I was going to be deported.”
House Republicans could’ve voted to protect Dreamers, to stop rape and other abuses, and to keep vulnerable families together. Instead they said, “good job, ICE” and continued doing nothing.