WASHINGTON (CN) — Despite demanding for months that the Biden administration take action to secure the country’s southern border, Republicans over the weekend signaled they were set on scuttling a White House-backed immigration bill.
A bipartisan group of Senate negotiators on Sunday unveiled the much-vaunted legislation — a compromise measure which packages stricter border security provisions with billions of dollars in aid for foreign allies such as Israel and Ukraine.
Among its border security provisions, which took lawmakers months to hash out, the bill allocates nearly $7 billion to U.S. Customs and Border protection, including roughly $723 million for hiring additional border patrol agents and to support overtime pay. The measure provides an additional $7.6 billion to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The compromise bill also addresses policy issues championed by Republicans, such as tighter restrictions on which migrants are eligible to claim asylum in the U.S.
Current regulations allow anyone who demonstrates “credible fear” of persecution in their home country to claim asylum, a metric which some lawmakers have argued is prone to abuse. The proposed Senate bill would force asylum adjudicators to consider a migrant’s past criminal conduct and whether they could have sought asylum elsewhere or moved within their country to escape persecution.
Under the proposed legislation, people who enter the country seeking asylum would be detained for 90 days by government personnel as their asylum claims are reviewed. Those who have their claims rejected would be immediately returned to their home countries.
The measure would further institute a policy allowing the Department of Homeland Security to shut down the southern border if weekly average crossings exceed 4,000 per day. If the weekly average goes above 5,000 — or 8,500 in a single day — the law would require the agency to close the border.
While the proposed bill was drafted as a bipartisan compromise, and the White House has urged lawmakers to “come together and swiftly pass” the legislation, it’s questionable whether the measure will ever make its way to President Biden’s desk.
In the Senate, opponents of the legislation are sure to mount a filibuster, meaning that the bill will need to clear 60 votes to make its way out of the upper chamber, which Democrats control by a slim margin.
And already, some lawmakers are breaking ranks.
“This border deal is a huge middle finger to working people,” said Missouri Senator Josh Hawley in a post Sunday night on X, formerly Twitter. The Republican senator pointed to a provision in the proposed measure that would provide automatic work visas to the immediate family members of migrants who have been approved for the first stages of an immigrant visa — a perk aimed at incentivizing legal immigration.
“The cheap labor machine keeps on running,” Hawley complained.
Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn said flatly that she would vote against the compromise bill.
“I will never vote to make illegal immigration legal,” she said, adding that Senate Democrats should instead take up a House-passed border security bill that has long been considered a poison pill for Democratic lawmakers.
New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez, a Democrat, also came out against the border bill Sunday night, writing in a statement that Senate negotiators had “reneged on their commitment” to consult with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus on the measure.
“They are trying to enact sweeping legislation without the buy-in of the most important stakeholders: immigrant communities and those who represent them,” he wrote.
Menendez bashed the bill's proposed changes to the asylum process and its other provisions, branding the deal “an enforcement wish list from the Trump administration.”
“Accepting this deal as written would be an outright betrayal to the communities we have sworn an oath to protect and represent,” he said.
Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called the border agreement “a monumental step towards strengthening America’s national security abroad and along our borders.” The Democrats’ chief lawmaker added that he believes the Senate would “rise to the occasion” and pass the bill.
Oklahoma Senator James Lankford, the border deal’s lead Republican negotiator, said the legislation was a “once-in-a-generation opportunity to close our open border and give future administrations the effective tools they need to stop the border chaos and protect our nation.”
Even if the Senate manages to muster the votes necessary to clear the proposed border bill, House Republicans have resolved to ignore it entirely.
“Let me be clear,” wrote House Majority Leader Steve Scalise Sunday night. “The Senate Border Bill will NOT receive a vote in the House.”
Echoing comments he made last week, House Speaker Mike Johnson said again Sunday that the measure would be “dead on arrival” in the lower chamber.
“This bill is even worse than we expected,” he said, “and it won’t even come close to ending the border catastrophe the president has created.”
Republicans’ insistence on scuttling a bipartisan border deal comes at the start of an election year in which immigration is sure to be a major issue — and lawmakers are already working to hold the Biden administration’s feet to the fire on the subject.
The House is set to consider an impeachment resolution this week against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who Republicans have accused of deliberately flouting immigration laws and failing to secure the southern border. Democrats have panned the move as a political hit job and have argued that the GOP has no constitutional basis on which to remove the secretary.
It’s unclear whether the lower chamber has the votes necessary to impeach Mayorkas — but the effort is surely doomed in the Senate regardless.
Follow @BenjaminSWeiss
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