Saturday, August 02, 2014

House Conservatives Curb Obama’s Deportation Delays as Price of Border Deal

House Republicans worked overtime last night to pass two bills addressing the border crisis — measures all but certain to die in the Senate – hours after President Obama threatened to act on his own. “I’m gonna have to act alone,” Obama told reporters during an afternoon briefing, dismissing the House’s emergency spending bill in response to the surge of unaccompanied children from Central America as “extreme” and “unworkable.” In a 223-189 vote late last night, however, the House passed a revision of legislation Speaker John A. Boehner dramatically pulled from consideration Thursday because of opposition from conservatives. More dramatically, the House voted 216-192 on a separate bill to stop Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, which the president implemented in 2012. Republican leaders blame its deferred deportations for certain young illegal immigrants for the sudden flood of Central American child migrants to the Texas border with Mexico. This second bill, sponsored by Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., states that the president cannot renew or expand DACA — effectively ending it and clearing the way for eventual deportation of children brought here illegally.  Conservatives who opposed the earlier version of the border spending bill said lack of action on DACA would be a deal-breaker...more

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