House Leadership Announces Floor Vote on Immigration and Border Security Package

FAIR Take | May 2023

Last week, House Republicans unveiled their plans for an Immigration and Border Security Package to stop the Biden border crisis and announced the package would receive a vote on the floor of the House within two weeks.

The legislation combines multiple bills that are supported by House Leadership.  The first is the Border Security and Enforcement Act of 2023, which members of the Judiciary Committee debated and passed by a vote of 23-15.  The second bill is the Border Reinforcement Act of 2023 which survived a marathon debate in the House Homeland Security Committee Wednesday and passed out of committee by an 18-15 vote.   The third bill included in this package is the RIDE Act, which was debated last week in the House Foreign Affairs Committee where it passed by a vote of 25-22.

Thursday, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), House Homeland Security Chairman Mark Green (R-Tenn.), House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas), and House Homeland Security Vice Chairman Michael Guest (R-Miss.) led a press conference to lay out their plans to combine the bills and bring the border security package to the House floor for a vote in May, the same week that Title 42 expulsion authority is set to expire.

Currently, these bills do the following:

• Require the Department of Homeland Security to resume construction of the border wall along no less than 900 miles of our southern border
• Increase manpower to a total of 22,000 Border Patrol agents
• Provide additional technology at border ports of entry to detect and prevent the entry of narcotics, contraband and illegal migrants
• Reform our asylum process to deter frivolous claims and prohibit gang members, felons and drunk drivers from benefitting from our asylum system
• Prohibit the Homeland Security Secretary from releasing illegal aliens apprehended at our border, strengthening our ability to detain, remove and return those aliens to their home country or another safe country
• Prevent unaccompanied alien children surges at the border in a humanitarian way, ensuring they are screened and processed expeditiously with family members and sent home
• Significantly limit the Secretary’s authority to grant humanitarian parole, so that broad, category-based parole programs cannot be established to circumvent Congress
• Mandate the use of E-Verify for all employers in a responsible, phased-in way
• Limit the use of the Customs and Border Protection phone app to inspection of perishable cargo only, banning it to be used to facilitate interviews in the U.S. for migrants

Remarking on the current state of our border, Majority Leader Scalise said, “I can tell you House Republicans are fed up and House Republicans are taking action. The Chairman and members behind me have been hard at work in the committees of jurisdiction – Judiciary Committee, Homeland Security Committee, the Foreign Affairs Committee – all have taken action now, over the last few weeks, to put together what I would call the strongest border security package that Congress has ever taken up.”

If passed into law, the House border security package will end President Biden’s policies that are causing the historic humanitarian crisis at the border and protect Americans from dangerous narcotics, cartel violence, and national security threats.

Continue to let Congress know you support the Border Security Package!