Report: House Leadership Bill a ‘Trojan Horse’ for Unaccompanied Alien Children Seeking Residency

The Center for Immigration Studies has released an analysis of the House leadership’s border bill that says the bill’s border security provisions are actually a “Trojan Horse permitting unaccompanied minors to ask for adjustment of status to lawful permanent residence.”

“While the appropriations sections of the bill are a great improvement over the president’s request, the sections of the bill addressing the processing of unaccompanied alien children will cause more problems than they solve,” said CIS senior research fellow Dan Cadman, the author of the report, in a statement.

CIS’s statement on the bill says it would include such improvements as giving less spending discretion to executive agencies and slashing the Obama administration’s request for services to illegal crossers by 90 percent. But, CIS says, it would create a new and more lenient process to allow illegal juveniles to ask judges for legal status through a “special motion,” duplicating the issues with the Cornyn-Cuellar HUMANE Act.  

“There is nothing in the provisions of Division B [identified as Secure the Southwest Border Act of 2014] of this bill that merits serious consideration by any member of Congress truly interested in abating the flow of minors and family units northward,” the analysis says. “While the appropriations sections of the bill are a great improvement over the President’s request, and focus government spending more directly on repatriation of the families and children who crossed in the surge, the sections of the bill addressing the processing of unaccompanied alien children are little more than a repackaging of the worst elements of the HUMANE Act.”