Ranking Member Thompson: Extreme MAGA Republican Failure-by-Design “Border” Bill So Bad It Would Bar American Kids from Commercial Flights
(WASHINGTON) – Today, Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS), Ranking Member of the Committee on Homeland Security, delivered the following remarks on the floor of the House of Representatives in opposition to H.R. 3602, the Extreme MAGA Republican Failure-by-Design “Border” Bill:
I rise in strong opposition to this sideshow. Consideration of H.R. 3602 today is a cynical move meant to appease Republicans who refuse to provide aid to fight autocrats and terrorists unless they get to deport migrant kids first.
These extreme MAGA Republicans care more about scoring political points than finding solutions and refuse to consider the bipartisan Senate border security and immigration enforcement bill. They’re having a hissy fit after the Senate threw out their unconstitutional articles of impeachment against Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas. They care only about electing Donald Trump—and they are happy to rip up the Constitution, create chaos at the border, and prop up Vladimir Putin to do it.
That is why they are insisting on rehashing this terrible bill, which has zero chance of passing the House, let alone the Senate.
H.R. 3602 shifts all border processing to ports of entry without providing any additional resources. The bill doesn’t fund a single new officer at ports of entry, where more than 90 percent of fentanyl is interdicted. Our ports of entry are already short over 4,000 officers. When the Homeland Security Committee considered a version of this last year, Democrats tried to add an additional 1,700 officers, but Republicans refused.
Furthermore, this xenophobic bill would strip DHS funding from any community or religious organization that helps migrants. It is so overly broad that organizations that place water in remote areas of the desert or provide a pregnant mother a safe place to sleep would be ineligible for DHS funding. This bill is so over-reaching that it would force the American Red Cross to verify every person’s immigration status before providing life-saving services following a natural disaster. That’s just inhumane.
Furthermore, H.R. 3602 is so poorly drafted that it would bar many U.S. citizens from boarding commercial flights. The bill sets requirements for forms of identification that can be used to go through airport security, but the list doesn’t include driver’s licenses from Washington, DC, Puerto Rico, Guam, or other U.S. territories.
U.S. citizens from those jurisdictions would not be able to fly without a passport until the TSA completes a formal rulemaking to add those IDs to the list, which could take years. And the bill doesn’t contemplate the existence of kids, who don’t have any of the IDs on the list. That’s right: this bill is so poorly written that it would actually bar American children from getting on an airplane.
Extreme MAGA Republicans are just not serious people. Republicans must put an end to this chaos and dysfunction and get back to serious legislating. Vote “no” on this unworkable bill.
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