At Subcommittee Hearing, Democrats Call for Commonsense Legislation to Address Decades-Long Broken Immigration System

February 16, 2024

Washington, D.C. (February 16, 2024)—Today, Rep. Robert Garcia, Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs, led Democrats in examining the Biden Administration’s efforts to reform America’s decades-long broken immigration system despite limited tools and Republican political stunts.

“House Republicans are blocking billions in vital funding to hire additional border agents, asylum officers, and immigration judges. That money could actually help process migrants faster or clear the asylum backlog, but you’re not interested in any of that. Instead, Republicans are wasting time and resources to cater to the demands of Donald Trump. After months of bipartisan negotiations, Donald Trump pressured Senate Republicans to kill the border policy deal because he doesn’t want President Joe Biden to chalk up a win ahead of the 2024 presidential election,” said Ranking Member Garcia in his opening statement.

The hearing included testimony from Jason P. Houser, Former Chief of Staff, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement; Matt O’Brien, Director of Investigations, Immigration Reform Law Institute; and Jessica Vaughan, Director of Policy Studies, Center for Immigration Studies. 

Committee Democrats criticized House Republicans for tanking a bipartisan border deal and voting to impeach Secretary Mayorkas.

Rep. Dan Goldman emphasized that Republicans crushed the bipartisan Senate border and foreign aid deal, stating: “Unfortunately, my Republican colleagues, at the direction of Donald Trump, decided that they would rather have this chaos at the border than actually solve some of the problems.”
In his closing statement, Ranking Member Jamie Raskin noted: “We are no more than 48 hours away from the fraudulent impeachment of the Secretary of Homeland Security who was impeached simply for performing his legal duties under severe resource constraints. And this took place at the time that the Secretary was actually negotiating the successful bipartisan package in the Senate, which the Republicans then denounced and rejected.”

Committee Democrats demonstrated their willingness to work with Republicans to enact commonsense, humane, and comprehensive legislation to fix the immigration system.

In his opening statement, Ranking Member Garcia highlighted: “We should be addressing those issues, but we also have to ensure that we are pushing back on some of the most extreme ideas that will do nothing to solve our crisis at the border. Democrats want to solve the border crisis. We want to ensure that we do so in a way that is bipartisan, and there have been bills that have come across from the Senate to do so that have been rejected.”
In his testimony, witness Jason Houser stressed the need for additional resources and comprehensive policy changes to solve the problems at the border: “The current state of the immigration system is broken. Outdated policies, inadequate resources, and the lack of legislative reform over time have left our immigration enforcement agencies struggling to keep pace with the ever-changing landscape of enforcement.”
In his closing statement Rep. Raskin stated: “As we’ve proven time and again, House Democrats are ready to work with anyone to enact common sense legislation to address the decades long broken immigration system, but the majority has just proven that they don’t want border solutions, they want a border problem to run on.” He continued, “I want to restate that we’re ready to craft serious bipartisan, humane policy solutions, the kind that Democrats and Republicans came up with in the Senate.”