Three former heads of the Department of Homeland Security. both under Democratic and Republican administrations. recently wrote a letter to Congress urging us to passes a clean Homeland Security appropriations bill and avoid another shortterm funding measure or. worse yet. a government shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security at the end of February. Let me quote from a part of the letter from former Homeland Security Secretaries Ridge. Chertoff. and Napolitano. again representing both Democratic and Republican administrations: [W]e write to you today to respectfully request that you consider decoupling critical legislation to fund DHS in FY 15 from a legislative response to President Obamas executive action on immigration ...The President has said very publicly that he will "oppose any legislative effort to undermine the executive actions that he" has taken on immigration. Therefore. by tethering a bill to fund DHS in FY 2015 to a legislative response to the Presidents executive action on immigration. the likelihood of a DHS shutdown increases. The letter continues: We do not question your desire to have a larger debate about the nations immigration laws. However. we cannot emphasize enough that DHSs responsibilities are much broader than its responsibility to oversee the Federal immigration agencies and to protect our borders. And funding for the entire agency should not be put in jeopardy by the debate about immigration... It is imperative that we ensure that DHS is ready. willing and able to protect the American people. To that end. we urge you not to risk funding for the operations that protect every American and to pass a clean DHS funding bill.
Keywords matched
immigration