CHC Chair Barragán on MSNBC: We need to have a real conversation…This has been a hostage taking, not a negotiation.
Washington, DC – Recently, Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Nanette Barragán (C-44) appeared on MSNBC’S The Weekend with Symone Sanders-Townsend, Alicia Menendez, and Michael Steele to discuss ongoing negotiations on a border package without a single member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and extreme House Republican’s latest political stunt of a sham impeachment of Department of Homeland Security Alejando Mayorkas.
Excerpts from the conversation are below. Watch the full discussion on the border package here, and on the attempted impeachment of Secretary Mayorkas here.
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On the Border Package Discussions
Chair Barragán: “Well the first thing is, everybody’s talking about fixing the problem. How do you fix the problem? The way you fix the problem is you have comprehensive immigration reform combined with enforcement provisions. That is not this deal. That is not what’s being reported.
“There are no pathways. This is strictly enforcement. And that is the problem from what I am hearing. You’re talking about shutting down the border. You’re talking about a Title 42-equivalent authority.
“If you take a look at 15 of the 20 months when the highest apprehension happened – it’s when you had Title 42. So we have evidence that it didn’t work. It’s not going to make things better. People are coming between ports of entry because they can’t come to a port of entry. And as I continue to remind people, asylum is legal. It is legal to come. It is legal to request and ask for asylum.
“Are we willing to come to the table and compromise? Absolutely. But we need to have a real conversation and give and take. This has been a hostage taking, not a negotiation. It’s not like Republicans have said ‘We will give you pathways,’ or ‘We will give you DACA or DREAMers,’ because we know that’s bipartisan. They haven’t said ‘We’ll give you farmworker modernization’.” So, we need to have that real conversation in a room if you want to seriously fix the problem.”
Alicia Menendez: “There’s no negotiation here. It’s not as though you’ve gotten something in exchange. It’s not as though you are talking about DREAMers or something for folks on the interior in exchange for all of the enforcement mechanisms we are hearing that Republicans want. Which makes it even more remarkable that you have the Speaker of the House ready to reneg on this deal, the deal that people in your Caucus, the contours of you do not like, simply because Donald Trump has told him to shut it down.”
Chair Barragán: “Right. And let’s remember, if Republicans were serious about fixing the border, they wouldn’t be saying no outright to things that the President is asking for.
One of the reasons the border is the way it is – you know, you’ve got to go back in time to do a historical timeline of that – but you have the last Administration who failed to put money into infrastructure in the southern border. And right now, Republicans are saying no.
“Let’s look at what Republicans have said no to: no to $805 million to combat fentanyl. They love to talk about this at hearings, but they don’t want to put their money where their mouth is, to put resources at the border to combat fentanyl.
“They have so no to $405 million for more border patrol agents. No to that! I mean, how are you going to address the situation? You need more resources, you need more people on the ground. They’re saying no to that.
“They’re saying no to more CBP officers at ports of entry to speed things up. They’re saying no to a billion dollars in ICE detention beds. Not even something I agree with. They’re saying no to this.
“So there is a laundry list of what they have said no to, so we know they’re not serious. And this is something I’ve been saying from the beginning. If you’re serious, you’re going to have a real conversation. It’s going to be a real negotiation. That happened when the Senate bill was coming together. There was give and take. There was real compromise. And that’s not happening here, because you’ve now paired it up with Ukraine and Israel, and I think that was a mistake. It should not be together.”
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On the CHC Being Excluded from Border Package Discussions
Michael Steele: “Have they given you a reason why?”
Chair Barragán: “No. Absolutely no. Not a reason why.
“I mean, the Hispanic Caucus has members – number one, we’ve been leading on this issue. Number two, our members are immigrants ourselves. We’re the children of immigrants. We represent communities that are highly immigrant based. We represent southern border cities and states as well. And it is just shocking that you would just exclude the Hispanic Caucus from these conversations.
“Even the meeting that the President held last week at the White House – it wasn’t just the four leaders, there was like 20 people in the room.”
Symone Sanders-Townsend: “It was the leadership and the ranking members of the Committees.”
Chair Barragán: “And not a single Latino or Latina. Not a single member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.”
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On the Sham Impeachment Attempt of Secretary Mayorkas
Alicia Menendez: “Congresswoman Nanette Barragán is back with us and that last point gets exactly it – for [House Republicans], they believe that this is a political winner.”
Chair Barragán: “Absolutely. This is a political stunt. We know that they’re going after the Secretary because they don’t agree on policy. That has never been a reason to impeach a cabinet secretary. It hasn’t been done, I believe, since the Civil War.
“As someone who served on the Homeland Security Committee and used to chair the Border Sub. – we never went after Nielsen and tried to impeach her when she was separating children and families. It was a policy disagreement. And that is what we’re seeing happening here – Republicans can’t govern. We know that this is a do nothing Congress. They have not been able to govern, so they’re trying to add more on the border to campaign on. And that’s what this is, a political stunt.”
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