House Hearing Targeting Welcoming Communities Threatens Families, Does Nothing To Secure Border

WASHINGTON — Republicans on the U.S. House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee held a partisan hearing for Thursday, targeting states with a policy or practice of welcoming immigrant families. The hearing focused exclusively on states with Democratic governors.

The House has also fast-tracked legislation (HR 32) that would deny federal funding to so-called “sanctuary” communities. That legislation employs broad selection criteria to target communities, offers no mechanism for reconsideration, and does not even specify who would make the required determination, and it also denies federal funding to targeted communities. Because undocumented immigrants are often not eligible for safety net programs like Medicaid, the impact of this bill will fall on the whole community, and largely on U.S. citizens and lawfully-present immigrants.

The stakes for communities targeted by the hearing and related legislation are extremely high, as federal funds support state and local governments in meeting a wide range of basic needs, from health insurance, education, and clean water to policing and disaster response.

Responding to the hearing, the Protecting Immigrant Families coalition issued the following statement from its director, Adriana Cadena:

“Attacks on communities that welcome immigrant families put millions of lives and livelihoods at risk in the name of partisan politics. Threatening federal funding for cities and states across the country would make every social problem our country faces worse and continue to erode the people’s trust in the federal government. The American people deserve much better from the representatives they’ve sent to Washington.”