The House of Representatives, in its final session before a five week recess, voted and passed a $694 million border appropriations bill on Friday in a vote of 223-189. The bill, if passed into law, would overturn laws already passed to protect the rights of immigrants such as advances achieved under the The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000. The bill would also deny an extension of the Deferred Action for Child Arrivals (DACA).

Specifically the measure would change The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 so that unaccompanied minors from Central America wouldn't be recognized as refugees but undergo the same expedited repatriation process as Mexican children.  

"Those changes are particularly egregious because the Act was passed by a bipartisan congress," said Andrea Cristina Mercado from We Belong Together, a national coalition working on common sense immigration reform through a gender lens.

The Obama Administration said it opposed the house bill, as did the Senate. There was opposition to the bill that fell down party lines.

"We always understood you wanted to uproot their parents. But now, late on a Friday night, you are going after the DREAMers who have known no other country but this one," Representative Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., said in a speech on the House floor. "Only cowards scapegoat children. And only those who are ashamed of themselves do it in the night of a Friday.

The bill includes $35 million to deploy National Guards to the border, $22 million to hire new temporary immigration judges and $197 million for the Department of Health and Human Services to house unaccompanied children.

The Hill reported "Another provision in the bill would allow border patrol agents to access federal land within 100 miles of the Mexican border so that they can track down illegal immigrants."

The Hill reported Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, said the measure would prevent President Obama from overstepping his executive authority, "This just restores the constitutional authority of the United States Congress, and it says, President Obama, don't continue to violate the Constitution."

Mercado said a part of the conversation that's often missing in immigration reform debate is the role of U.S. foreign policy in Central America and how the things carried out there have ramifications in terms of immigration, such after the coup in Honduras in 2009.

"These children are fleeing some of the worst violence in the world. In El Salvador and Honduras we are talking about countries with the highest homicide rates in the world and that continues to be brought to light. But we see a Republican party that is unwilling to really recognize that reality and doesn't want to look at these children and see them as refugees," Mercado said.

"I think the Latino community understands the undertones of racism in these policy efforts combined with their responses to immigration reform. When it is brown children they are unwilling to stand up for decent human rights. I think that is one of the reasons there is so much outrage at the Republican party's unwilling to show any kind of compassion, and continue to exploit these children for political games, and rile up a extreme right-wing base and tap into fear."

Mercado said the failure on immigration reform is wasting talent -- 75 percent of the 11 million undocumented immigrants are women and children and they are kept from realizing their full potential because of their inability to have any legal status and all the obstacles that creates.

Her coalition is seeking change to the Senate bill and administrative relief from President Obama's program because often immigrant women are single mothers who can't afford a costly process or so many immigrants work in the informal economy who often times don't have pay stubs or are domestic workers cleaning houses and caring for children.