Senate

Durbin pressures Ryan on immigration reform

by Jordain Carney - 11/09/15 7:49 PM ET

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on Monday urged Speaker Paul Ryan to support immigration reform legislation, discussing an undocumented immigrant from the Wisconsin Republican’s home state on the Senate floor.

“Speaker Paul Ryan should support DACA and work with Democrats to pass comprehensive immigration reform to fix our broken immigration system,” Durbin said. “[But] Speaker Ryan and other Republican leaders in Congress have made their agenda clear they want to shut down this program.”

{mosads}Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, allows undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children to obtain temporary work permits and avoid deportation.

Ryan has come under fire from Democrats, and some Republicans, for suggesting that the House will not take up immigration reform legislation until after Obama leaves office, saying that he doesn’t trust the president on the issue.

Durbin spoke from the floor with a photo of Maricela Aguilar, who he said was an undocumented immigrant from Ryan’s state who is currently attending graduate school in Boston.

“She’s going to return to Milwaukee when she graduates, she promises. … She’s a loyal Wisconsinite. A loyal member of the Milwaukee community. And I would say to Speaker Ryan she wants to be a part of your state for the rest of her life.”

Durbin suggested that under a Republican plan, Aguilar would be sent “back to a country that she hasn’t been to since she was 3 years old. She would be deported back to Mexico.”

The deferred action program has been in the spotlight since Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who is running for president, said that he would end the program even if Congress failed to pass immigration reform.

Tags Dick Durbin Marco Rubio Paul Ryan