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发帖数: 29576 | 1 Kamala Harris’s First Bill: Lawyers for Border Detainees
California’s newest U.S. Senator, Kamala Harris, revealed her first piece
of legislation on Thursday, the Access to Counsel Act, which targets
President Donald Trump’s travel restriction executive order by providing
lawyers to anyone arriving at U.S. border crossings and ports of entry.
“Refugees, immigrants, students, and tourists all deserve to be able to
access their lawyer in legal proceedings that could change the course of
their lives, whether they enter the country at an airport or come across the
border,” said Harris upon announcing the bill.
Harris left her position as California’s Attorney General to run for the
Senate seat vacated by retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer.
Harris’ office directly referenced the President’s January 27 executive
order, which temporarily restricted travel to the U.S. from seven terror-
prone nations. That order has since been challenged in court and as of
Thursday afternoon was halted under a lower court’s temporary restraining
order upheld in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The office of the freshman Senator from California claimed that after the
executive order went into effect, “reports flooded in of refugees, Green
Card holders, and even U.S. citizens — many of whom were women, elderly, or
children — held for long periods of time, and denied access to volunteer
lawyers.” Harris’s office also characterized the order as a “Muslim Ban,
” though a religious test was not a provision of the order.
As California’s top lawyer, Harris backed a State Senate Bill that provided
money for lawyers serving unaccompanied minors at the border, according to
a statement from Harris’ office. Reports at the time when Gov. Jerry Brown
signed the bill into law, including a September 2014 Washington Post report,
indicated that the funding would amount to $3 million.
Democrat Sens. Richard Blumenthal (CT), Cory Booker (NJ), Tom Carper (DE),
Kirsten Gillibrand (NY), Ed Markey (MA), and Elizabeth Warren (MA) are
cosponsors of the bill.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Amnesty International USA
and National Council of La Raza are among the organizations supporting the
bill.
CAIR has been declared a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates
and was named by federal prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator in a
Hamas-funding operation.
Speaking about the bill, Sen. Blumenthal called access to legal counsel a “
fundamental right,” speaking of non-citizens and citizens alike. Sen.
Booker called the “right to counsel … a fundamental American value
enshrined in the Constitution” in an announcement of the bill.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Harris protested outside the White
House on the Sunday after the ban originally took effect. In a letter to
Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly that same day, Harris demanded border
officials carry out the court-ordered halt of the executive order. |
