More than three years after House Republicans passed a major tough-on-immigration bill, the House Judiciary Committee is set to consider a proposal Tuesday with many of the same provisions on asylum, visas and other border policies.
The text of the bill, released ahead of the panel meeting, reflects a shift after President Donald Trump took office and Congress, via reconciliation bills, gave Trump billions for border wall construction and his campaign promise of mass deportations.
Some House Republicans, including Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), have insisted on following through with campaign promises for tougher immigration proposals in the remaining six months of the current congressional session. In a letter to colleagues this month, Roy called on the House to pass the immigration policies reflected in the 2023 bill, which stalled in the Senate.
Last month, Roy introduced a bill similar to the 2023 effort that shares the same title as the new proposal slated for markup. The newest version doesn’t include a section on border wall construction, or a requirement for all companies to use E-Verify to ensure their new employees can legally work. That provision caused conflict with Republicans worried about reducing the unauthorized agriculture workforce.
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The new proposal, titled the Permanent Trump Secure Border Act, includes provisions that would add penalties for immigrants who overstay their visa by more than 10 days, and expands the Homeland Security secretary’s authority over third-country deportations and the asylum process.
The bill would allow Mullin to deport people to countries they’re not from without a contract with the other governments. Rarely used in previous administrations, the federal government now has 35 agreements with other countries to accept deportees who are not their citizens, according to a tracker from Refugees International and Human Rights First.
Under the bill, migrants seeking asylum would also have to prove they didn’t go through other countries they could’ve requested protection from before reaching the U.S., or that other countries denied their request for asylum.
Immigration courts are already denying asylum for nearly all applicants. Denials have sharply increased since the end of last year. Immigration judges, who are Justice Department employees, denied nearly 80% of asylum cases in December, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. In May, they denied almost 94%.
The immigration-enforcement bill is getting traction after Speaker Mike Johnson leveraged a vote on it to gain support from Roy for a reconciliation bill to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, Punchbowl reported.
Agriculture-minded Republicans didn’t get to add an expansion to the H-2A visa program for temporary farmworkers.
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