Speaker of the House John Boehner sent a letter to the president Wednesday, calling on him to follow through on his June requests for changes to the migration processing system that would allow the unaccompanied minors to be sent back to their home countries more quickly.
“In your letter to Congress on June 30, 2014 you said you supported, ‘providing the DHS Secretary additional authority to exercise discretion in processing the return and removal of unaccompanied minor children from non-contiguous countries like Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador,'” Boehner writes. “On July 9, at an event in Texas, you said, ‘Last week, I sent a letter to Congress asking them to … give us flexibility to move migrants through the system faster.'”
“After these public statements, and similar comments from other administration officials, we were surprised that you did not include these changes in your formal supplemental request. Worse, in recent days, senior congressional leaders in your own political party have backpedaled and voiced unswerving opposition to any changes at all.” (RELATED: Gallup Shows Obama Is Wrong About Immigration)
Boehner asks whether the administration still even supports the 2008 child trafficking law that even the New York Times has credited with motivating the migration surge.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has also gone back and forth on the issue, saying that changes to the law were “not a deal breaker” in early July, only to change her mind a week later.
In a statement explaining her opposition to a bipartisan bill that would allow minors not from Mexico or Canada to be deported without an immigration hearing, her office said that “Leader Pelosi opposes this legislation as it is not in furtherance of due process for these children.” (RELATED: White House Hid Huge Spike Of Families Crossing Border)
“We are reaching a point of implosion, if we have not already reached it,” said Judge Dana Leah Marks on Tuesday, explaining that U.S. immigration courts currently have a backlog of over 375.000 cases. Marks is president of the National Association of Immigration Judges.
“Frankly,” concludes Boehner’s letter, “it is difficult to see how we can make progress on this issue without strong, public support from the White House for much-needed reforms, including changes to the 2008 law.”