Press Releases

Congressman French Hill (AR-2) released the following statement today after the House passed the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act (H.R. 240) by a vote of 236 – 191:

“In 2013, President Obama stated that implementing immigration ‘reform’ through executive action was ‘difficult to defend legally’ and ‘not an option.’ The President ignored his own advice, and now it is critical that Congress, as the legislative branch, assert its constitutional role in checking the President’s power. Today’s bill provides essential funding for our homeland security and repeals the President’s unlawful executive overreach on immigration policy that has worsened our illegal immigration crisis, violated the Constitution, and punished those who have come to this country legally. I urge the President to work with Congress to enact real reform to our broken immigration system by securing our borders and supporting legal immigration.” 

According to the House Appropriations Committee, this bill provides $39.7 billion for the Department of Homeland Security and prioritizes frontline security – including all operational, counterterrorism, and threat-targeting activities, and essential tactical equipment – and saves hardworking American taxpayer dollars by reducing overhead costs and cutting funds for lower-priority programs.

Further, the bill contains amendments to repeal the President’s unlawful executive action on immigration:

• Reps. Aderholt / Mulvaney / Barletta Amendment: Prevents any funds to be used to carry-out the Executive actions announced on November 20, 2014 to grant deferred action to certain unlawful aliens, and four of the “Morton Memos” on prosecutorial discretion and immigration enforcement priorities issued in 2011 and 2012 that effectively prevent certain classes of unlawful aliens from being removed from the country. This amendment also declares that no funds may be used to carry-out any substantially similar policies to those defunded, that the policies defunded and any substantially similar policies have no statutory or constitutional basis and therefore no legal effect, and provides that no funds may be used to grant any Federal benefit to any alien as a result of the policies defunded.
• Rep. Blackburn Amendment: Provides that no funds may be used to consider new, renewal or previously denied Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) applications. 
• Reps. DeSantis / Roby Amendment: Requires that DHS treat any alien convicted of any offense involving domestic violence, sexual abuse, child molestation, or child abuse or exploitation as within the categories of aliens subject to DHS’s highest civil immigration enforcement.
• Reps. Salmon / Thompson (PA) Amendment: Gives the sense of Congress that the Executive Branch should not pursue policies that disadvantage the hiring of U.S. citizens and those lawfully present in the United States by making it economically advantageous to hire workers who came to the country illegally.
• Rep. Schock Amendment: Gives the sense of Congress that the Administration should stop putting the interest of immigrants who worked within the legal framework to come to the US behind those who came here illegally.

Almost half of U.S. states, including Arkansas, are currently suing the Administration over the President’s executive action. In December 2014, a federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled many of the President’s recent executive actions on immigration unconstitutional.

About Congressman French Hill

J. French Hill, 58, is the 22^nd Member of Congress to represent central Arkansas in the U.S. House of Representatives.  A ninth generation Arkansan, he was elected on November 4, 2014, and will serve on the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services for the 114^th Congress.  Prior to his congressional service, Mr. Hill was actively engaged in the Arkansas business community for two decades as a commercial banker and investment manager and was founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Delta Trust & Banking Corp in Little Rock.

Prior to his community banking work in Arkansas, Mr. Hill served as a senior official in the administration of President George H.W. Bush. Prior to his Executive Branch service, from 1982-84, Mr. Hill served on the staff of then-U.S. Senator John Tower (R-TX) as well as on the staff of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs.

Mr. Hill is a magna cum laude graduate in Economics from Vanderbilt University.  He is married to the former Martha McKenzie of Dallas, Texas, and they have a daughter, Sarah Elizabeth McKenzie Hill, and a son, William Payne Hill.  The Hill family resides in Little Rock.