WASHINGTON (TND) — President Joe Biden fought for the survival of a national security package Tuesday that would reform key aspects of border security and immigration in exchange for increased funding for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.
The deal was the product of months of negotiations between the White House and a bipartisan group of senators -- Sens. James Lankford, R-Okla., Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz. -- that the president praised as a historic solution to the long-plagued U.S. immigration system.
"For too long, as you all know, the immigration system has been broken and it’s long past time to fix it," Biden stated while sharing prepared remarks from the White House's State Dining Room.
The result of all this work is a bipartisan agreement that represents the most fair, humane reforms in our immigration system in a long time.
The bill, which was finally releasedon Sunday, would address long-overdue pitfalls in the asylum process by funding more immigration judges and asylum officers in an effort to reduce the 6-7 year legal proceedings to a target of six months. The border would be further reinforced by thousands of new border agents and machines that can detect the presence of fentanyl and resume construction of former President Donald Trump's border wall.
The legislation would also giver the government the authority to close border after certain thresholds of illegal crossings. If the number of illegal border crossings reaches above 5,000 daily for a five-day average, an expulsion authority would automatically kick in so that migrants are sent back to Mexico without an opportunity to make an asylum claim. If the number reaches 4,000, presidential administrations would have the option of using the expulsion authority. The border would remain "closed" in this way until crossings reduced to acceptable numbers.
Traditional conservative organizations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Border Patrol Council, the largest union representing border patrol agents and support staff (membership around 18,000) have endorsed the deal.
"The Border Act of 2024 will give U.S. Border Patrol agents authorities codified, in law, that we have not had in the past," union President Brandon Judd said in a statement.
This will allow us to remove single adults expeditiously and without a lengthy judicial review which historically has required the release of these individuals into the interior of the United States. This alone will drop illegal border crossings nationwide and will allow our agents to get back to detecting and apprehending those who want to cross our borders illegally and evade apprehension.
The Border Patrol Council and others contend that the deal is "not perfect," but it is "a step in the right direction and is far better than the current status quo."
Biden praised the group's support, saying its perspective represents "the people whose job it is to secure the border every single solitary day," as opposed to those who "just show up" to the border "for photo ops like some members of Congress."
However, neither the president's nor these conservative groups' words appeared to move congressional Republicans' growing entrenchment against the bill.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who was endorsed by the National Border Patrol Council, called the deal "a steaming pile of crap" upon its release Sunday and doubled down on his remarks at a press conference Tuesday held by Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla. (he also said it was "stupid" for the union to endorse the bill).
Scott's presser was a rejoinder of sorts to the Senate GOP leadership's role in shaping the legislation as Scott, a more conservative member of the conference, continues to challenge the priorities of the Republican leader, Mitch McConnell. Scott challenged McConnell for leadership of Senate Republicans in November 2022 and lost, but those gathered by Scott, some of the most conservative members of the Senate GOP, all had voted for him in that ouster effort.
The gathered senators proposed their opposition as, in part, a protest against legislation that did not reflect the values of Republicans.
"It codifies a lot of things we don’t want. It normalizes thousands of people a day," said Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., referring to the deal's proposed thresholds for closing the border.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, argued that the package should have just adopted the provisions in the House Republican's border security bill, the Secure Our Borders Act, which critics argued focused too much on enforcement. He, and others, also said Ukraine aid should have been further tied to border security aspects by making it conditional on "the achievement of certain sustained border security benchmarks."
We’ve got to figure out a way to start working together as a conference," Scott added. "We would like a secure border; we would all like Ukraine to win and Russia to lose.
While Senate Republicans came out forcefully against the bill Tuesday, their colleagues in the House left the deal for dead on the side of the road as soon as it was announced Sunday.
All four of the highest ranking Republicans in the House conference -- Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., and Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y. -- released statements within minutes of the bill's unveiling saying either explicitly or implicitly that the deal was dead on arrival in their chamber if it managed to pass the Senate.
While Johnson had been saying the bill was likely DOA in the days leading up to its release, and echoed that sentiment Sunday without having read all 370 pages, he reiterated this stance on Fox News Monday night.
"We did read through it and it did not take long for us to realize this is dead on arrival," Johnson told the conservative network, claiming it would not reform the immigration system but instead only incentivize further illegal crossings.
Sen. Lankford responded to the waves of criticism from his side of the aisle on Fox News as well, telling the network Monday morning, "Are we as Republicans going to have press conferences and complain the border's bad and then intentionally leave it open ... are we just going to complain about things or address and change as many things as we can?
Biden lay the blame for the rising tide of opposition against the deal at Trump's feet, claiming that the former president has been lobbying Republicans in both chambers of Congress to sink it.
"Donald Trump thinks it’s bad for him politically he’d rather weaponize this issue than solve it," Biden said during his remarks. "Republicans are caving - frankly they owe it to the American people to show some spine and do what they know to be right."
However, the president does also face opposition from within his own party as progressive Democrats, particularly in the House, decry the immigration and border security aspects of the deal as "extremist" and "draconian." Other Democrats, like Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif, criticized the dealmaking process for its lack of border-state Democrats or members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (Sen. Sinema, a the sole border-state negotiator caucuses with the Democrats).
The deal's future was further thrown into question Tuesday after Politico reported McConnell told the Republican conference they could vote against it if they didn't like it in a closed door meeting Monday.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has proposed that the bill still could pass but would need significant amendments.
