$4.6 Billion Humanitarian Border Crisis Supplemental: Protecting Vulnerable Migrants & Rejecting Pres. Trump’s Agenda

The Senate Appropriations Committee approved – 30 to 1 – an emergency supplemental bill to address the most urgent, humanitarian needs at our southwest border. Senate

Democrats fought hard to ensure that this supplemental protects vulnerable children in HHS custody, mitigates inhumane conditions for migrants in DHS custody, and improves due process for migrants – all while rejecting many of President Trump’s requests to fund his extreme, anti-immigrant agenda. The $4.6 billion dollar package is $400 million below the Administration’s revised request.

Providing humane care to children in HHS custody

• Provides $2.88 billion to the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which houses the most vulnerable group of migrants: unaccompanied children. Without these funds, ORR will run out of funding to care for these vulnerable children at the beginning of next month. ORR has already stopped making payments for education, legal and refugee support services.

• Includes $109 million to ensure the safety and well-being of these children, through post-release wrap-around services, legal services, and case management to place children in loving homes.

• Requires ORR facilities that house children to comply with state-based licensure requirements and minimum standards of humane care, oversight, and transparency – unless there is a demonstrable need to house children in influx facilities. Influx facilities must comply with the minimum standards of care outlined in the bill, including Flores requirements, minimum staffing ratios (including clinicians), and access to legal services.

• Prohibits ICE from conducting immigration enforcement based on the information obtained from potential sponsors of unaccompanied children, and formalizes restrictions on information-sharing with ICE.

• Improves oversight and increases transparency by requiring monthly public reporting of family separation incidents, providing for Congressional visitation at ORR facilities with 48 hours’ notice, and providing funds for the HHS Office of the Inspector General.

Improving conditions for migrants in DHS custody

• Provides $1.3 billion to address increasingly inhumane conditions for migrants apprehended and detained at DHS facilities. Without these funds, the “dangerous overcrowding” found at DHS facilities by the DHS’ Inspector General, sicknesses and deaths in custody, and unsanitary living conditions will not change.

• Requires all new CBP migrant care and processing facilities to adhere to CBP’s National Standards on Transport, Escort, Detention, and Search (TEDS) to ensure the humane treatment of migrants.

• Includes $112 million for food, clothing, A/C units, medical care, medical vehicles, shower units, hand wash stations, food storage units, and other hygiene products at CBP processing facilities, including diapers, formula, baby wipes and other essential supplies for infants, toddlers, and adults.

• Provides $45 million for improved medical care at ICE detention facilities.

• Adds $20 million for alternatives to detention to expand the program by an estimated 13,500 enrollees.

• Includes $30 million in grants for nonprofits and local jurisdictions that are providing critical services and shelter to migrants released from DHS custody.

Improving due process for migrants and reducing court backlogs

• Provides $10 million for the Legal Orientation Program (LOP), nearly doubling the amount provided for LOP in FY 2019 and significantly expanding the number of migrants who would have access to LOP’s services.

• Includes $45 million to hire 30 additional Immigration Judge teams to reduce the immigration courts’ current backlog of over 850,000 cases.

Rejects President Trump’s requests to fund his extreme, anti-immigrant agenda

• Does not provide a single dollar of President Trump’s $341 million request for ICE detention beds.

o $69 million is provided for ICE to maintain FY 2018 end of year staffing levels throughout FY 2019, and overtime requirements; it does not allow for

any new hiring beyond levels agreed to in the FY 2019 DHS Appropriations Act.

• Cuts down President Trump’s request of $377 million for Department of Defense (DoD) funds by over 60%, providing only $144 million for DoD to cover costs like fuel, repair of vehicles, helicopter flights, medical assistance, and engineering activities.

o The supplemental provides no authority for the DoD to use appropriated funds to construct detention facilities for migrant children and families. o When DoD has provided housing for migrant children, such as during the crisis in 2014, the costs were paid for by HHS, not DoD. Congress has been informed that HHS has examined using certain military bases to again house migrant children, but there are no indications that the military has any legal basis to take over HHS’s responsibilities in this area, and this supplemental provides them with no such authority.

• Does not provide any of President Trump’s requested funds to train border patrol agents to conduct credible fear screenings of asylum seekers.

• Does not provide any of President Trump’s requested funds to construct facilities to help carry out his deeply harmful Migrant Protection Protocol policy (“Remain in Mexico”).

• Includes a catch-all provision, Section 301, prohibiting funds appropriated to DHS from being transferred and used for any other purposes or accounts (i.e., cannot be used to build the wall or pay for more ICE beds).

o Section 306 does not provide DHS with additional transfer authority, and it does not override Section 301. It ensures only that DHS does not violate spending laws as it voluntarily and temporarily transfers employees from other components of DHS to the border to assist with the humanitarian crisis. These employees are performing functions such as food preparation and supply management.