Left: Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., speaks on border security and Title 42 during a press conference at the Capitol on May 11, 2023. Right: U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, D-Conn., at press conference on Jan. 23, in Washington, D.C.
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images; Samuel Corum/Getty Images
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Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images; Samuel Corum/Getty Images
Left: Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., speaks on border security and Title 42 during a press conference at the Capitol on May 11, 2023. Right: U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, D-Conn., at press conference on Jan. 23, in Washington, D.C.
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images; Samuel Corum/Getty Images
A trio of Senate negotiators unveiled a $118 billion bipartisan agreement to overhaul some key Biden administration immigration policies. The deal is part of a national security funding package that includes additional money for Ukraine and Israel. But as the issue of the border becomes a central flashpoint in the 2024 presidential campaign, and former President Trump publicly urges GOP lawmakers to oppose the deal, the prospects for the bill reaching President Biden’s desk seem bleak.
For several months Oklahoma Republican Sen. Jim Lankford, Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy and Arizona Independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema have worked on a plan to address the record number of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Sunday that he plas to move the bill this week, with a key vote on Wednesday. “Senators must shut out the noise from those who want this agreement to fail for their own political agendas,” Schumer wrote.
The bill is not the type of comprehensive immigration legislation that Congress considered but failed to advance more than a decade ago. Instead, negotiators focused their time on addressing the discreet problems facing border officials and border towns as record numbers of migrants continue to cross the U.S. border with Mexico.
This proposal includes several tools to address the border, including: requiring the president shut down the border if the numbers of migrants hits a specific threshold; adjusting the rules for who qualifies for asylum; expediting the process for deciding asylum claims; and allowing migrants authorization to work while awaiting adjudication of their asylum claim.
The proposal directs the president to shut down border in moments of high migrant traffic
Sinema characterized the bill as ending “catch and release” policies. The bill would require those crossing the border illegally to be detained or immediately returned to Mexico, Sinema said Sunday on CBS News’ Face The Nation.
She said the bill also includes higher standards for asylum and would speed up the process for asylum seekers to ensure a hearing on their case within six months.
She clarified that there would be a mandated border shutdown when migrant traffic reaches 5,000 “approaches” per day, the president would have the option to institute a shutdown at earlier points.
Before the bill was unveiled, President Biden vowed recently, while campaigning in South Carolina, he would sign it and shut down the border.
“If that bill were the law today, I’d shut down the border right now and fix it quickly,” Biden said. “A bipartisan bill would be good for America and help fix our broken immigration system and allow speedy access for those who deserve to be here. And Congress needs to get it done.”
Lankford told reporters that had policy been in place 4 months ago, the million people allowed in would have all been deported. “When we hit those numbers, everybody’s out — day after day after day.”
He also noted there is also a provision if staffing levels make it difficult to manage at another number below 5,000 the federal agency can also shut the border down.
He stressed there’s been a lot of misinformation about how this would work, but emphasized the legislation creates an entirely new process.
“This body is really good at tweaking old things, we’re not good at creating something brand new,” Lankford said.
Sinema told reporters “we are changing the policy dramatically.” She noted that border officers, rather than immigration judges, and the bill funds the overhaul for three years to help shift and resources to new policies.
The legislation also adds some restrictions around the ability of migrants to claim asylum. The bill also narrows the president’s authority to parole those migrants who are permitted to enter as they await court hearings to adjudicate their asylum claims.
In response to a push from Democratic governors and mayors who are dealing with a significant wave of migrants in their states and cities, the bill includes work permits for migrants so they can gain jobs as their cases are processed. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott claims his administration has sent more than 100,000 migrants to cities like Los Angeles, Denver and New York.
The president sent Congress an emergency funding package in October asking for over $100 billion for aid to Ukraine, Israel and efforts to support Taiwan against Chinese aggression. The proposal also requested additional money to beef up security at the southwest border, but Republicans quickly decided that any new money had to be linked to border policy changes.
Election-year politics impacts fate of the bill
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has argued that Congress should seize this moment to force the Biden administration to agree to a new law.
“If this were not divided government we wouldn’t have an opportunity to do anything about the border — in fact, I don’t think we’d get 60 votes for any border plan if we had a fully Republican government, so this is a unique opportunity where divided government has given us an opportunity to get an outcome,” McConnell said.
But just a day later McConnell told a closed-door meeting of Senate Republicans that the politics of the issue had shifted. He pointed to a statement from Trump, the party’s likely presidential nominee, opposing a Senate deal.
McConnell publicly supported the negotiators moving forward, but the episode made it clear that the Republican party, largely behind Trump, was not prepared to cross him on an already politically thorny issue he has made a signature of his campaign.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, in a letter to House GOP colleagues days before it was announced, said the proposal’s main structure meant it was “dead on arrival,” and it’s unclear whether he would even bring the measure to the House floor for a vote. Many hard-right House GOP lawmakers dismissed the Senate work product before it was finalized. One conservative, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., signaled she would move to oust the speaker if he advanced the bill, since it is part of a national security package that includes money for Ukraine.
Many Republican lawmakers argued Biden has the authority now to shut down the border and any new legislation should wait until after the 2024 election.
— NPR’s Claudia Grisales and Jasmine Garsd contributed to this story
