Congressman James Comer (R-KY) told Breitbart News he has problems with Speaker Paul Ryan’s “compromise” bill, one of two immigration bills on which the House is expected to vote Thursday.
“The [compromise] bill that’s just … been born in the last twenty-four hours, I have some problems with that bill. I believe that too many people are going to be granted amnesty,” Comer said Wednesday afternoon while attending a House Republican Conference media event on the nation’s opioid epidemic, a crisis closely connected to the ongoing immigration debate.
“Right now, I’m leaning ‘no’ on [the compromise] bill,” Comer added.
“I liked the original Goodlatte bill. It wasn’t everything that I wanted, that my district wanted, but it was a compromise. It was a conservative compromise [that] went through regular order. So that bill, I support.”
My district wants the wall. They don’t want to fund sanctuary cities. They don’t want a penny going to welfare or sanctuary cities for illegal immigrants. They also want to secure the border. They do not want amnesty… There are parts of this bill that would be popular in my district, but there are parts that raise a concern for a lot of people in my district.
On the topic of separate detention of the relatively small number of children apprehended on the border with illegal alien parents, Comer said he wants to see families remain intact, but “on the Mexican side of the border.”
I want to secure the border and we are a nation of laws and it’s illegal to cross that border as an illegal immigrant, so I applaud the president in securing the border. We need to provide humanitarian relief for those families but we need to do it with the family intact and we need to do it on the Mexican side of the border.
The House has slated votes Thursday for both the Ryan “compromise” bill and the Goodlatte bill.
Amanda House is Breitbart News’ Deputy Political Editor. You can follow her on Twitter at @AmandaLeeHouse and Instagram.