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The legislation would change the system in three substantive ways: it would oblige asylum-seeking migrants to apply to a consulate or embassy in their home country or in Mexico, not at the southern border; this would increase the length of detention of migrant children from 20 to 100 days and facilitate the expulsion by officials of unaccompanied minors to Central America.
The measure also requires 500 new immigration judges to eliminate the mammoth backlog of immigration courts.
At a press conference, Graham, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that "the incentives created by our laws will cease to exist". He added: "This humanitarian catastrophe will begin to repair itself".
The Trump administration has asked Congress to review the country's immigration laws, arguing that loopholes have prompted increasing numbers of migrants to cross the border. But the Democrats have already rejected some of the proposals presented by the administration, including some aspects of the Graham bill, such as keeping migrant children in detention longer.
President Donald Trump, meanwhile, is expected to unveil Thursday the details of the White House immigration plan, told CNN a source close to the plan.
"What I've done, is removing from the border security plan, the acute problem," Graham said. "A wall will not solve this problem, people are trying to be captured."
In a letter to the legislator in March, the former Secretary of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen, said her most immediate request was to be able to return unaccompanied children from Central America to their homeland. Originally they "had no legal right to stay," as the department repatriates Mexican children.
Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan echoed some of the same concerns, including the limited time that migrant children are allowed to remain in the custody of the United States. government.
"What happened is that 21 days are not enough time for a full procedure, with access to a board, with obtaining documents from Central America," he said. told lawmakers late April, adding that "the idea that we want to hold children for a long time is simply not accurate."
The problems raised by the administration stem from an increase in migrants, many of whom are unaccompanied families and children from the North Triangle countries, located on the southern border. In April alone, the border patrol arrested 98,977 migrants for illegal entry, according to customs and border protection data.
The increase in the number of asylum applications has continued to stem an already overburdened judicial system.
According to the Syracuse University Transaction Record Information Exchange Center, which records immigration court data, there is currently a backlog of more than 850,000 pending cases in the country's immigration courts. All of these requests are not asylum applications, but there has recently been a rise in credible fear claims at the border, the first step in the asylum procedure.
Graham is no stranger to immigration reform, having previously worked with his colleagues in the past. But its legislation is one of many that deal with immigration, an issue that divides politically. Attempts to change the US immigration system have struggled to gather enough consensus to be adopted by Congress.
Graham, recognizing the discord, said that he would be open to a change in his measure, saying that there would be an "audience so that people could test this proposal".
CNN's Jim Acosta contributed to this report.
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