A bipartisan group of House lawmakers said Tuesday that Washington must fix the asylum system and protect longtime undocumented residents after a tour of the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona, arguing that recent sweeping border legislation did not remedy key problems.
Members of the House Problem Solvers Caucus said the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law this summer and commonly referred to as H.R. 1, poured more than $140 billion into border walls, detention capacity, new application fees and hundreds of millions for additional enforcement personnel but left the asylum backlog and the fate of long-term migrants largely unaddressed.
"The problem solvers want to work together to do three things: to continue to secure the border, to fix the broken asylum system, and, No. 3, to address some of the concerns we have about our long-term residents that have been here for 10, 20, 30 years," Rep. Tom Suozzi, D-N.Y., said at a news conference. "We’ve gotta keep our eye on the product."
Caucus members said federal enforcement has shifted toward interior operations that have resulted in large workplace raids and deportations of people who have lived in the United States for decades, sometimes splitting families. Rep. Juan Ciscomani, R-Ariz., who immigrated as a child, said lawmakers must balance enforcement with protections for migrants who have built lives in the U.S.
Lawmakers also described migrants as being exploited by transnational criminal organizations, saying cartels charge as much as $10,000 per person and sometimes orchestrate mass crossings to move drugs and trafficked children. The caucus argued that a more targeted, bipartisan, piecemeal approach to policy changes stands a better chance of enactment than broad, partisan measures that risk collapse in later stages of the legislative process.
"This is not even about the president," Suozzi said, adding that while the administration should deport violent criminals, the current focus on interior removals has created collateral harm. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., co-chair of the caucus and a supporter of the DREAM Act, said immigration policy should combine strong border security with humane enforcement.
The caucus comments come after the administration and many House Republicans celebrated H.R. 1 as a major expansion of border enforcement. The legislation directed substantial funding to border barriers, detention beds, and hiring thousands of new U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol personnel, and it instituted new application fees and changes to eligibility for some taxpayer-funded benefits for undocumented immigrants — provisions that Democrats in Congress also criticized as falling short on asylum reform and protections for long-term residents.
Federal immigration authorities have carried out large-scale enforcement operations under the current administration. Officials say more than 139,000 people have been deported since a recent policy shift, and agencies have conducted operations such as "Operation Midway Blitz" in Chicago, which targeted immigrants with criminal records. Some deportations have included transfers to foreign detention facilities, including prisons in El Salvador, according to officials who have discussed individual cases and legal authority used by the administration.
Problem Solvers Caucus members said they plan to pursue moderate, bipartisan legislation that would preserve recent enforcement gains while addressing the asylum backlog and creating legal pathways or protections for migrants who have lived in the United States for many years. They emphasized that any successful measure will need to find compromise across party lines and avoid provisions that could stall in Congress.
Democrats on Capitol Hill have also flagged shortcomings in the recent law, saying it did not sufficiently resolve asylum processing delays or provide relief for long-term residents. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle said the next phase of debate will test whether Congress can pair tougher border enforcement with systemic fixes to asylum adjudication and durable solutions for people who have long-standing ties to U.S. communities.