Lindsey Graham Just Introduced New Legislation to Fix the Border Crisis. Here's What it Does.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham held a press conference Wednesday morning to announce new legislation, the Secure and Protect Act of 2019, aimed at fixing the current border crisis and strengthening security. The legislation, which is 11-pages long, allows federal immigration authorities to keep families together in detention centers for 100 days, allows for unaccompanied alien children to be swiftly returned home to their families, reforms the asylum system and clarifies asylum standards for "credible fear" in order to cut down on rampant abuse. Those seeking asylum will be required to do so in a U.S. consulate or embassy in Central America or Mexico. "No more asylum claims at the U.S. border if you're from Central America," Graham said. Currently, families and unaccompanied minors can only be held for 20 days. Because of the lengthy processing backlog for asylum seekers, they are released into American communities. "If you're an unaccompanied minor from Central America, under our law we can only hold you 20 days at DHS, then we turn you over to labor HHS. Ninety-eight percent of the unaccompanied minors who make it to America from Central America never leave the United States. Families know this, word is out on the street in the Northern Triangle countries that if your child can get here by themselves then the chance of them staying in America is almost 100 percent. We are incentivizing a horrible journey," Graham said. "Under our law if you come as a unit, family unit, and you have a minor child, we can only hold the family for 20 days because we don't want to separate the family. We don't have enough detention bed space. We release the entire family after 20 days. So word is out on the street in Central America that if you bring a minor child with you, your chance of getting deported goes to almost zero. Your hearing date is years away and we release you inside the country and that's the goal of coming. This legislation is going to deal with the problem."...MORE