On Thursday, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and Congressional Border Caucus members Reps. Raúl M. Grijalva, Filemon Vela and Beto O’Rourke today called for a “greater focus on border community needs” in Congress’ ongoing immigration reform efforts. Later Grijalva told Ray Suarez of PBS that he was uncomfortable with the Senate’s plan.
Grijalva said there “has been a lot of the swallowing and bitterness of some of these additions by the Senate and even some of the components that were in the Senate bill before Corker were being swallowed because of the importance of a path to citizenship.”
Grijalva was referring to the Corker amendment which he claimed “added $30 billion-plus, doubled everything that was already in the bill. And, for many, for environmentalists and people that care about those public land laws, clean water, clean air, the waiving of all those laws along the border and public lands, people have difficulty with that. The issue of just militarizing the border to an extent that it becomes almost a combat zone will change the texture and the life in that community forever.”
Grijalva, the co-chair of the Progressive Caucus, said the idea of a secure border was naïve. “I think we need to define what security is. And I think it includes much more components than boots on the ground and drones and helicopters and sensors and towers and fences. It includes much more. But the definition is very narrow. We will make an effort to try to expand that definition.”
Grijalva told Suarez that if the Senate’s plan came to the House floor “at this point, I have a great deal of discomfort with it. I feel that I have — I have been reluctant to state what I would do in that situation, so that we wouldn’t marginalize the opportunity to try to improve it.”