House committee approves bill that includes $10 billion for border wall


On Wednesday, the House Homeland Security Committee passed a border security bill that includes $10 billion in border wall funding, $5 billion to improve entry points, and money to hire 5,000 more Border Patrol agents.
Proposed by committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the Border Security for America Act passed along party lines, 18-12, and is seen by Democrats as a way for Republicans to throw a bone to President Trump, who made building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border a campaign issue. Democrats are also concerned that this may be an early attempt at linking border security funding with protecting DACA recipients. "There's no doubt that this is a setup for that conversation," Rep. Nannette Barragán (D-Calif.) said.
The bill will likely pass in the House, but isn't expected to clear the Senate, where a 60-vote majority is necessary. The committee's Democrats had fun proposing amendments to the bill, like Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who called for its name to be changed to the "Taking Americans' Land to Build Trump's Wall Act of 2017," and Rep. Filemon Vela (D-Texas), who proposed that any definition of a "border wall" include the words "big and beautiful," "real," "inclusive of a door," and "paid for by the Mexican government," The Hill reports.
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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