The bill does not have any Democratic co-sponsors. Asked about the legislation, a spokesperson for Senate Homeland Security Committee Chair Gary Peters, D-Mich., pointed to his sponsorship of a separate bipartisan bill aimed at increasing support for victims of human trafficking.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said in a statement the department is reviewing the Republicans’ Stop Taxpayer Funding of Traffickers Act. “From day one, this Administration has ramped up efforts to crack down on human smugglers and drug traffickers,” the spokesperson added. “We’ve secured record funding for border security, launched an unprecedented anti-smuggling campaign with regional partners, and expanded legal pathways for immigration to cut out the smuggling networks preying on vulnerable migrants.”
DHS launched a $60 million campaign in 2022 to dismantle human smuggling networks, resulting in the arrest of over 8,800 smugglers and the disruption of nearly 9,000 smuggling operations over the past year, per the department. DHS says that it is also deploying new high-tech solutions to crack down on criminal networks and that it has seized more drugs and arrested more people on fentanyl-related charges in the last two years than in the previous five years combined.
Prospects for comprehensive immigration reform remain dim in the Republican-led House and Democratic-led Senate. After record-high border crossings in 2022, 72% of Americans now say Congress should prioritize increasing border security, according to a January NBC News poll. But 80% in the same survey also said Congress should provide a legal pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who meet certain requirements.
Instead, many Republicans in the House are pursuing efforts to revive the Trump administration-era border wall and crack down on asylum-seekers.
“When I was in the House, we tried to work on this issue in a constructive manner,” Blackburn said, while pointing the finger at Democrats. “And it’s disappointing to us that some of our colleagues across the aisle are wanting the issue and not the solution.”
Blackburn, Hyde-Smith and Britt say they are working together to address the problem, in part, because of something they all share: They are mothers.
“I think it has a lot to do with it,” Hyde-Smith said. “I have a small shoe on my desk that I picked up that came out of the Rio Grande River. And I will always keep that shoe on that desk so we can remember we got to continue to tell the story.”
“As a mama,” Britt shared, “when you look and you see those little shoes, when you see a 6-month-old baby trembling because they just got out of the water … you realize that this crisis has a huge cost.”
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
