- Koch brothers-backed groups are reigniting the push to find a permanent solution in Congress for recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
- The campaign is part of a seven-figure effort to bring the issue back to the forefront of Congress.
WASHINGTON — A group of political action groups backed by the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch are launching a seven-figure ad buy to revamp the push to provide a permanent solution for the undocumented immigrants benefitting from the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
The LIBRE Initiative and Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce will announce on Tuesday the new ads, which feature several US presidents describing how America was built by immigrants. In addition to a permanent solution for DACA recipients, the ad also calls for a bipartisan plan to strengthen border security.
"The American people deserve a government that is effective and efficient in solving our nation’s problems," LIBRE Initiative President Daniel Garza said in a statement.
"Congress and the White House have spent a lot of time talking about DACA, but today our elected officials have yet to approve a permanent legislative solution. The Dreamers are among our best and brightest. They are students, workers, and men and women risking their lives in the Armed Forces. Washington must come together and approve a bipartisan solution that provides certainty for Dreamers and security improvements along our border."
"President Trump and our congressional leaders should step up and do the right thing," added Freedom Partners Executive Vice President James Davis. "This is too big of a problem for lawmakers to ignore, or to allow politics to get in the way."
The Koch network of groups have often pushed for a permanent DACA fix to be tied to increased border security measures.
In March, the network of organizations pushed congressional leaders to include in the government funding bill $25 million in funding for President Donald Trump's long-desired wall along the US-Mexico border as well as a permanent DACA solution.
That effort failed to come to fruition, as DACA and significant border security provisions were left out of the spending bill.
The revamped effort by the Koch-supported groups shows that the issue is not going away and still has strong financial backing moving forward.
