Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell wants Majority Leader Harry Reid to put two immigration bills passed by the House up for a vote,
Breitbart News reports.
The House passed the bills just before leaving for August recess. They would block President Barack Obama from continuing the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which Obama signed with an executive action during the 2010 presidential campaign.
"The president seems to have forgotten that he does not possess the authority to rewrite our immigration laws and that, on the contrary, the Constitution requires that he take care that the laws be faithfully executed," Republican McConnell said in a statement released to Newsmax.
"The House has passed two bills to address the humanitarian crisis on our southern border, and the Senate should vote on them. That’s why I began the process of putting them on the Senate’s legislative calendar shortly before the current recess, and I urge Majority Leader Reid to schedule a vote on these bills as soon as the Senate returns."
Fellow Republican Sens. Jeff Sessions of Alabama and David Vitter of Louisiana joined in.
Sessions was critical of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's call for Obama to use his executive powers to bypass Congress and issue the "broadest possible" amnesty for illegal immigrants. She told Univision radio that she would like to see DACA extended for a longer period of time and include the parents of DREAMers, illegal immigrants who came to the United States as children.
She said she also would like to see DACA protections extended to the parents of U.S. citizens.
Obama is taking
a one-day break from his vacation on Monday to return to Washington, and some have speculated he might be planning on signing an executive order to deal with the immigration crisis.
"It is chilling to consider now that these groups, frustrated in their aims by our constitutional system of government, are plotting with the Obama administration to collect their spoils through executive fiat,"
Sessions said in a statement on his website.
Sessions is urging the public to call on their senators to push Reid to stop blocking the vote.
"Any senator who fails to request such a vote is complicit in these planned actions," he said.
Vitter, who serves as chairman of the Senate Border Security Caucus, said the number of illegal immigrant children in Louisiana is higher than the Obama administration has reported. A statement from his office said Vitter had to confirm through an anonymous Immigrations and Customs Enforcement official that there have been 1,259 new cases opened for juveniles in Louisiana since the crisis began.
Combined with the existing 1,956 juvenile cases, the total now is 3,215, the statement said.
The flood of unaccompanied children crossing the border from Central America has inundated the Border Patrol and has hindered their efforts at stopping drug traffickers and potential terrorists, Republicans say.
Vitter's office said he has been calling out the administration for its practices of assisting foreign children being smuggled into the country illegally without penalizing their parents.
He also repeatedly has asked Homeland Security how many times the practice has occurred, but has seen no response, he said.