Nancy Pelosi On Immigration Reform: ‘There’s Still The Month Of July’

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi doesn’t have much faith in Congress passing comprehensive immigration reform this year, according to a report from The Associated Press.

Pelosi said this in Brownsville, Texas, where she toured a Border Patrol facility that is holding unaccompanied children. Pelosi said that this issue should not be a political one, but she is also hoping that House Speaker John Boehner and the rest of the members of Congress will do something.

“A few days ago I would have been more optimistic about comprehensive immigration reform,” Pelosi said. “I thought that we had been finding a way because we have been very patient and respectful of [Boehner] trying to do it one way or another.”

Nancy Pelosi added that she doesn’t think Boehner “gives us much reason to be hopeful now,” but that doesn’t mean it’s time to throw in the towel.

“There’s still the month of July,” Pelosi said.

Nancy Pelosi didn’t go into details on why she doesn’t think comprehensive immigration reform will be passed this year.

During a press conference, Nancy Pelosi addressed what President Barack Obama has called an “urgent humanitarian situation.” But Pelosi wanted to avoid calling the situation a “crisis,” according to a report from Business Insider. Instead, she called it an “opportunity” for America to show the values it holds.

“This is a community with a border going through it,” Pelosi told reporters. “And this crisis — that some call a ‘crisis’ — we have to view as an opportunity.”

Since last October, more than 50,000 unaccompanied children have crossed the border illegally, according to a report from Politico. Most were from Central America, and federal law doesn’t allow the U.S. to immediately return minors from “non-contiguous countries,” which include Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala.

By law, the children that Nancy Pelosi visited must be transferred to the Health and Human Services Department within 72 hours of their apprehension. After that, the children are sent to different shelters until they can be reunited with family members and wait for their hearing day in immigration court.

Many of the children being held have been kept in inhospitable situations. Nancy Pelosi said what she saw “was so stunning.”

“If you believe as we do that every child, that every person, has a spark of divinity in them and is therefore worthy of respect, what we saw in those rooms was [a] dazzling, sparkling array of God’s children, worthy of respect,” Pelosi said. “So… we have to use the crisis — that some view as a crisis, and it does have crisis qualities — as an opportunity to show who we are as Americans, that we do respect people for their divinity and worth.”

In a related report from The Inquisitr, Nancy Pelosi told Jon Stewart on The Daily Show that she didn’t know why the website for Affordable Care Act had so many glitches.

“It’s not my responsibility,” she said.

Nancy Pelosi added that she “shared the same concern the public does” and that the website is “getting better.”

[Featured image credit: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite via USA Today Politics]

[Inline image credit: Truth Revolt]