Time For Pelosi And Hoyer, After Passing A Bill To Fund Concentration Camps, To Retire

These were the members of Congress who voted against Trump's concentration camps. The rest of them voted to fund the concentration camps. Remember that in 2020

Moments after the House vote to fund border operations through the reactionary Senate approach, progressive Arizona Democrat Eva Putzova sent me a note. She was not pleased that her own congressman, ex-Republican Blue Dog Tom O’Halleran voted for the Senate bill backed by Pelosi. He’s occupying the seat that she’s running for. “To give rogue ICE operations a blank check without demanding accountability and without negotiating provisions to end the separation of families and the abusive treatment of immigrant children is immoral. Leadership would mean to actually negotiate. I'm frankly disgusted by the lack of political courage to do what's right. When I'm in Congress I'm prepared to hold the line on human rights issues and when compromise is necessary, negotiate on the 75th yard line--not on the 25th."

There’s no one who has worked harder and more effectively to solve the immigration crisis than Pramila Jayapal (D-WA). After Pelosi and Hoyer got that Senate bill passed, this is what she had to say:

Just days ago, I worked hard with the Congressional Progressive Caucus to get an emergency funding bill that would alleviate the inhumane treatment at the border being perpetrated by the Trump Administration.  In order to ensure that funds were used appropriately, we put in strong guard rails to specify that children should get food, water, medical care and legal services; that no child should be kept in these facilities for more than 90 days; and that private, for-profit contractors who violate these standards would have their contracts terminated. It was absolutely critical to include these provisions to ensure these funds actually go to the children they are meant to help, and every person— regardless of party— should support them.

In stark contrast, the Republican-led Senate bill— very unfortunately supported by 33 Democrats— simply does not contain sufficient guard rails, continues to provide more funding for the deportation forces of the Immigration & Customs Enforcement agency and allows a lawless administration to evade basic standards of care for children. The Senate bill also provides $145 million to the Department of Defense that would likely be used to build tent camps for children and families on military sites despite persistent reports that such facilities inflict harm on children and families.

Without the strong accountability provisions we included in the House version, we simply allow the Administration to continue its inhumane treatment of immigrants. I have worked on immigration issues for decades, was the first Member of Congress to talk to hundreds of families that were separated by Trump and witnessed personally the abuses of Trump’s metering process at the border— a policy that eventually led to the haunting death of the father and child, depicted in a photo this week. I simply cannot vote for a bill that fails to address crucial needs for oversight and accountability when it comes to protections for children.

Pramila was not the only member of the House to vote NO on that disgraceful bill Pelosi got passed. 95 Democrats and 7 Republicans voted against it. Some, like Jayapal, voted NO because they feel the same way she does. Others voted NO because they fear primaries from the left— particularly New Dem Gregory Meeks and Ben Ray Luján from Pelosi’s leadership team. I can imagine an irate Cheri Bustos, happy to vote for the horrible bill, screaming about how this is what primaries do. Of course, she's right: this is what primaries do! And we need of them for people like Bustos and her cronies.

The Democrats who worked with the Republicans to get this crap bill passed were led by Blue Dogs Josh Gottheimer (NJ), head of the misnamed Problem Solvers' Caucus, and Henry Cuellar (TX). (By the way, most normal Democrats in the House are blaming Schumer for betraying party values.) Lipinski, an anti-immigrant Democrat to begin with, didn't seem to care that he has a strong primary challenger. He voted YES, with the Republicans and Blue Dogs. His primary challenger noticed. "First I am appalled at the bullying behavior of the Blue Dogs," Marie Newman told us right after the vote. "Secondly, I would have voted NO for this horrible bill that would enable and empower child abuse at our border. I am deeply disturbed by today’s votes." Almost all of the candidates I spoke to yesterday, said pretty much the same thing, basically what Mike Siegel said: "We can’t give Trump one more dollar for his racist war on immigrants. I’d have voted NO." His opponent, serial Trump-enabler Mike McCaul (R-TX), voted YES, which was no surprise to anyone, since McCaul helped Trump put together the children-in-cages regime on the border.

Briana Urbina is a young progressive attorney taking on Steny Hoyer, needless to say, voted for the bill. Briana told me she “would have voted against it because we should not be funding the cruel and inhumane treatment of asylum seeking children and families. Anyone who is voting to fund our current system has the blood of 7 children, a transgender woman and 16 additional souls on their hands. I have spent a lot of time thinking about what I will tell my future grandchildren about how this tragedy began and what we did to save the lives of these people. Steny Hoyer should look at the faces of his grandchildren, right now and ask himself the same question. Nothing has broken my heart more over the past two years than our crisis at the border and we must take bold action right now to address the suffering of people on both sides of our border.”

Jose Serrano has an exceptionally good voting record and you wouldn’t normally expect a solid progressive like him to vote with the Republicans and Blue Dogs, especially not on something like this. But he did. He’s old, sick, tired and retiring... and Hoyer was warning members that if they didn’t vote for this this pile of dung, they would be stuck in DC for the 4th of July break. I don’t know if that’s why Serrano did it, but he did it. One of the most promising young progressive activists vying for his Bronx seat is Tomas Ramos and right after the vote he told me he wouldn’t have voted for the bill. "The appropriations bill seeks to allocate $4.5 billion in emergency spending to agencies handling the so called ‘surge’ of migrants that are arriving at the Southern border,” he said. “Let’s be clear, these individuals are not ordinary migrants, they are refugees that are fleeing their homelands because of political instability coupled with economic hardships. This bill does not address the conditions of the facilities by providing humanistic services that these human beings need. Rather, it seeks to continue to dehumanize these individuals by making appropriations ‘for Security, Enforcement, and Investigation’. In other words this bill will be used as a tool to over police an otherwise already vulnerable population."