Napolitano to highlight border security as immigration plan debated

President Obama is dispatching Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to the Southwest in an effort to highlight border security operations as members of Congress work to strike an agreement on a comprehensive immigration reform bill.

Napolitano will travel to San Diego and El Paso, Texas, on Monday and Tuesday to inspect security operations in those cities and meet with state and local officials about what more could be done to protect the border.

The trip comes a day after Senate Democrats said their plan would give Napolitano final say to decide whether border security was strong enough to offer a pathway to citizenship for the nations 11 million illegal immigrants.

Under the legislation outline offered by a bipartisan group of senators last week, that pathway would only exist if the border is deemed to be appropriately secure. But lawmakers did not outline the specific metrics they would use to gauge border security, nor did they explain who would be responsible for judging whether those goals had been accomplished. Under one proposal, a group of elected officials in border states would be given that responsibility.

The White House initially balked at such a requirement, saying it feared that coupling the pathway to citizenship to border security requirements would leave undocumented immigrants in limbo. Democrats, led by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), have proposed that the Department of Homeland Security instead be granted the power to decide whether goals had been met.

“What we’ve proposed is that the DHS secretary, whomever it is, will have final say on [whether] whatever metrics we propose are met,” Schumer said. “We think those metrics will be quite objective.”

Some Republicans are likely to balk at granting Napolitano such power. But with her trip this week, the Homeland Security secretary is looking to project a tough stance on border security, with plans to highlight the increased number of agents patrolling the border and new technologies being deployed by the federal government.

The president will also look to continue the push on immigration, with a meeting Tuesday at the White House with labor and business leaders intended to promote his immigration reform effort.

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