This statement can be attributed to Olivia Golden, executive director of the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP).

The Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) applauds the defeat of two harmful immigration bills strongly supported by the House Republican leadership. These bills would have made radical changes to our current legal immigration system, provided $23 billion for an unnecessary and divisive physical wall, and made it extremely difficult to claim legal asylum. Furthermore, instead of “solving” the crisis at the border, as they claim, the bills would have put into law the deeply flawed intention of the Trump Administration to jail immigrant families indefinitely as they await court proceedings. These bills also did nothing to help reunite families who have already been separated in recent months.

Both the Securing America’s Future Act (H.R. 4760) and the Border Security and Immigration Reform Act of 2018 (H.R. 6136) would have unjustly deported, detained, and criminalized immigrant families. They would have blocked American citizens from reuniting with their married adult children and siblings who live abroad, eliminated the diversity visa program, and sharply increased the barriers for asylum seekers. The Border Security and Immigration Reform Act claimed to protect Dreamers but would have left more than 80 percent of them without a path to citizenship.

While a preliminary injunction is now in place to reunite separated families, it is not at all clear that the horror of family separation is over for families. In light of this, members of Congress should now codify protections for children and families to ensure that they are not separated and that no child spends time in detention. Congress knows what it needs to do: take up the bipartisan Dream Act, demand that President Trump stop incarcerating families, and insist that we immediately reunite thousands of children with their parents.