Media Roundup of #DonaldTrumpAct: GOP Risking 'Further Alienating Minorities...'
From The New York Times Editorial:
Bills are being rushed to the floor in the House and Senate in response to a woman's senseless killing in San Francisco by an unauthorized immigrant with a long criminal record. That single crime has energized hard-line Republican lawmakers who have long peddled the false argument that all illegal immigrants are a criminal menace, and that the best way to erase their threat is by new layers of inflexible policing.
On Thursday afternoon the House passed the first of these bills, to punish state and local governments…
Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina mused about the need to find and swiftly rid the country of criminal "aliens"…
Representative Steve King of Iowa likened crimes by unauthorized immigrants to the 9/11 attacks, "a tragedy that causes my hard heart to cry."
Language like that is hard to distinguish from the rantings of Donald Trump, who brought his racist road show to Laredo, Tex., on Thursday. But there is room — even in immigration — for sane, sound policy. Immigration officials need to find ways to avoid the bureaucratic mishandling of felons in their custody, while protecting civil liberties. Cities and states should not be penalized for refusing to take on the expense and public-safety consequences of turning their officers into enforcers of civil immigration law. Congress should support the Department of Homeland Security's efforts to focus its limited resources on dangerous criminals and national security threats. It should allow the vast majority of immigrants, who pose no threat, to pass background checks, pay fines and back taxes and live and work in this country openly.
That would be a serious solution, one that gives deserving immigrants a foothold in this country and makes it easier to uncover those who come here to do harm. It is called comprehensive reform, which Mr. Smith, Mr. Gowdy and others in their anti-immigrant caucus, now consumed with exploitive fury over the San Francisco tragedy, have fought at every turn.
From Los Angeles Times Editorial:
Rather than threatening local governments and withholding grants, Congress should instead get serious about the root problem: the dysfunctional immigration system.
The Republican Donald Trump Caucus was so desperate to be Trump's immigration ‘apprentice' that, as POLITICOput it, it rushed…
…to reopen the immigration debate…
[and]
...GOP leaders have promised the rank-and-file that more enforcement legislation is coming...
The Donald Trump Act was widely denounced by groups from all over the country, including law enforcement. So it should come as no surprise that two Republican Members with law enforcement backgrounds voted against the bill. With votes like these, Americans see that Speaker Boehner and House Republicans are not all serious about finding a commonsense solution to fixing our broken immigration system. Their outdated, extremist-pandering strategy continues to "risk further alienating minorities..." [7/24/15]