In a series of votes on Wednesday, House Republicans attached several anti-immigrant riders to a Department of Homeland Security funding bill that will now assuredly be vetoed by the White House, if it can pass the Senate.
The bill, which keeps the agency funded through September, was passed out of the House Rules Committee Monday night, along with several amendments ruled in order. The addition to the appropriations bill would roll back President Obama’s executive actions on immigration.
In a 237-190 vote in the full House on Wednesday morning, the Aderholt Amendment was approved by lawmakers. That measure explicitly bars any funds in the bill from being used to “carry out the Executive actions” announced by President Obama last November, which affected nearly 4 million undocumented parents of US citizens, protecting them from deportation.
Shortly after, in a closer 218-209 vote, the House passed the Blackburn Amendment, which took aim at the President’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) that was implemented in 2012.
DACA allowed certain undocumented immigrants who were brought to the country before the age of 16, known as “DREAMERS,” to be exempt from deportation. Those protections were extended to even more DREAMERS by the President’s most recent actions in November.
Republican claims underlying these amendments–that the President is not properly enforcing immigration law–don’t jive, however, with how aggressive the administration has been in deporting undocumented individuals in the country.
In 2013, the White House deported more than 418,000 immigrants, more than any other single year amount in history. The majority of those deported were non-criminals. And since he took office, President Obama has deported more than 2 million people, more than any other US president in history.
With their actions today, House Republicans targeted only specific portions of America’s undocumented immigrant population given protections by the President, such as children and families with mixed citizenship.
The final, amended DHS funding bill was passed in a 236-191 vote.
The Senate will take up the measure next, but Republican provisions attacking the President’s immigration actions are unlikely to overcome a filibuster. Last session, lawmakers came together in the upper chamber to pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill that ultimately failed in the House.
Money for the DHS is expected to run out on February 27th, giving lawmakers more than a month to figure out how to fund the agency without also sabotaging executive immigration reform. The White House has said on numerous occasions it would veto any measure that undermines the president’s executive actions.
