National

Amid public outcry, GOP scrambles to counter Trump policy of separating children from parents

WASHINGTON — Fearing a political backlash over the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" border crackdown, Republicans in Congress have started pushing back hard against the policy – with some pleading with the White House to stop separating children from their parents and others drafting bills they say would keep families together.

Utah's Orrin Hatch, the longest-serving Senate Republican, called the policy unacceptable. He was circulating a letter to his colleagues Tuesday that would ask the Department of Homeland Security to halt the policy and give Congress time to find a solution. Hatch plans to make the pitch to his Republican colleagues during their GOP lunch, according to his spokesman Matt Whitlock

“The way it's being handled right now isn't acceptable. It’s not American," Hatch said Monday. "I think we've got to try and keep families together and do whatever it takes to keep them together.”

But even as Republican lawmakers criticized the "zero tolerance" policy, they offered legislative solutions that would not stop the Trump administration from criminally prosecuting immigrants who cross the border illegally – which is causing the separations. 

North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows, chairman of the hardline House Freedom Caucus and a close Trump ally, said he will introduce legislation Tuesday that would clarify a decades-old court settlement that says children cannot be detained for long periods of time. That would allow children to stay with their families while they're being detained.

In an effort to appease conservative voters who support the crackdown, Meadows' bill would also assume that asylum seekers were committing fraud and make them prove it was “more probable than not” their claims are true. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has already restricted asylum, but the Meadows bill would take those efforts even further.

Under the "zero tolerance" policy, adults suspected of crossing the border illegally are sent to federal jails or other detention centers to await prosecution. If they have children accompanying them, the young people are placed in the custody of the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, because children cannot be held in adult facilities.

Wrenching images and audio of children crying as they are separated from their parents have sparked an outcry from religious and political leaders across the country.

House Speaker Paul Ryan said last week that he does not support separating families at the border, but he stopped short of blaming the Trump administration.

But other GOP lawmakers, in a near panic over the possible political fallout, are rushing to weigh in with the president and offer their own legislative fixes.

The chairman of the House GOP's campaign committee, Rep. Steve Stivers, said Monday he has sent a letter to the White House asking them to "stop needlessly separating children from their parents."

"If the policy is not changed, I will support other means to stop unnecessary separation of children from their parents," Stivers said in a Facebook post.

Stivers is the highest ranking House GOP leader to take on the administration that directly, so far, over the "zero tolerance" policy of criminally prosecuting all immigrants who cross the border illegally.

In the Senate, all Democrats have signed onto a bill sponsored by California Sen. Dianne Feinstein that would prohibit family separations within 100 miles of the U.S. border except special circumstances, such as abuse or neglect of the children.

That measure has no support from Republicans. But two high-profile border-state GOP lawmakers have launched separate legislative efforts to end what has become a public-relations disaster for the GOP.

"All Americans are rightly horrified by the images we are seeing on the news, children in tears pulled away from their mothers and fathers," said Sen. Ted Cruz, a hardline Republican from Texas who faces a surprisingly stiff re-election challenge this year.

Cruz introduced legislation Monday that would allow the Trump administration to keep prosecuting immigrants who cross illegally but authorize new "temporary shelters" so that parents and children can be detained together while they awaiting immigration or criminal proceedings.

Cruz said the bill would "mandate that illegal immigrant families must be kept together, absent aggravated criminal conduct or threat of harm to the children."

Another Texas Republican, Sen. John Cornyn, the No. 2 GOP leader in the Senate, said he is also working to craft a bill that would stop the family separations, even as the voiced support for the immigration crackdown.

“In some ways there’s this kind of false choice being presented we can either enforce the law or you can keep families together, and we think you can do both and that’s what our bill would do," Cornyn told reporters Tuesday.

Cornyn said his bill would change the requirement that children can't be kept in custody longer than 20 days in order to keep families together. But in an attempt to minimize the time in custody families would be brought to the front of the line to process their claims.

"I think everybody has seen these terrible scenes of children being separated from their parents and wants to try to come up with a solution," Cornyn said.

He said he would introduce a bill in the coming days that would "mitigate the problem of family separation while improving the immigration court process for unaccompanied children and families apprehended at the border."

Trump will meet with House Republicans Tuesday evening to lobby GOP lawmakers to support two broader immigration bills. Those proposals were hashed out before the border separations sparked a firestorm and deal with, among other things, border security and a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children known as "Dreamers."

The meeting could dissolve into chaos with members expressing frustration about the administration's choice to enforce the "zero tolerance" policy and incorrectly blame Congress.

One of the pieces of legislation being discussed by House Republicans — the more moderate of the two bills — would attempt to mitigate the border separations, but it would not solve the problem entirely. Both bills face a steep path in the House and an almost impossible pass in the Senate which requires bipartisan support to pass legislation. No Democrats have indicated they support the legislation.

"The idea that Congress is going to pass immigration legislation during an election year is ridiculous," said Frank Sharry, the executive director of immigration advocacy organization America’s Voice. "There is going to be an ongoing immigration crisis unless President Trump picks up the phone.”