Washington, DC– Last night Senate negotiators released a bipartisan border security package as part of a national security supplemental. The U.S. Conference of Mayors has long called on Congress to fix our broken immigration system and in November, a bipartisan group of 139 mayors sent a letter urging quick action on President Biden’s supplemental funding request, which included resources for cities, non-profit agencies and religious organizations serving migrants. Today, U.S. Conference of Mayors Immigration Reform Task Force Chair Mesa Mayor John Giles and Vice Chair for Border Policy San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria released the following statement in support of the Senate’s bipartisan national security supplemental package:
“Today we speak as a unified bipartisan coalition in support of the United States Senate’s bipartisan border security agreement. This package is a positive step forward for cities dealing with the ongoing impacts from the crisis occurring along our southwest border. The border package represents a compromise that will help to stabilize the situation, reduce the human suffering, and begin to fix our broken immigration system. While we welcome legal migrants and asylum seekers to our cities, we need more help to provide them food, housing, services, and access to employment. America’s cities are compassionate, but we cannot do it alone.
“We strongly support the two-pronged solution of new policy reforms and funding in this border package. The agreement will provide our cities with resources to help support asylum seekers living in our communities and set them on a path to self-sufficiency through reforms to the work authorization process, combat the ongoing scourge of fentanyl entering our cities and poisoning our residents, and ensure our border economies can continue to thrive with the hiring of thousands of new agents to staff our ports of entry.
“We thank the Biden Administration and the bipartisan group of Senators led by Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), and Sen. Krysten Sinema (I-AZ) for their leadership in drafting this compromise package. The Senate must pass this bill quickly and send a clear message to the House that this is no time for partisan games.”