The Senate’s bipartisan agreement on was released in detailed bill form Sunday, and all sober analyses indicate it is even more of a complete capitulation by the Biden administration to longstanding Republican demands than predicted. Yet House Republican leadership and many hard-right GOP senators have escalated their frontal assault on the agreement, which began before it was even formalized.
Within hours of the release of the 370-page bill, House Speaker Michael Johnson declared it dead on arrival in his chamber. Senate Republicans like Missouri’s Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt are trashing an agreement their own party leadership sought and won.
It means the first and probably last chance for significant border reform in the current political era is almost certainly going to collapse in the coming days. Chalk it up to another kneecapping of constructive governance by former President Donald Trump and his enablers throughout the GOP.
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As we and others have noted during negotiations on the agreement, Trump has effectively ordered his congressional followers to kill this or any border agreement with Democrats. He has generally not even bothered concealing his self-serving nihilism on the topic: He wants the southern border to remain as chaotic as possible so he can use it against President Joe Biden in the coming presidential campaign.
Still, it’s astonishing to watch Republicans forcefully reject an agreement that does virtually everything they have demanded regarding border control, while offering almost nothing to Democrats’ priorities.
The agreement would speed up the asylum process, which currently can take years, to no more than six months, in part by funding thousands of new asylum officers.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement would receive almost $8 billion in emergency funding — nearly doubling the agency’s current annual budget — with much of it earmarked for expanded detention capabilities. Another $7 billion would be added for border patrol, including hiring additional patrol agents.
The legislation would require Homeland Security to shut down the border if daily illegal crossings top 5,000 migrants on average, and couldn’t re-open again until illegal crossings drop by 75% after hitting those numbers. It would also require the government to complete border barrier building projects that have been funded, while making $1.4 billion available to states and cities to process immigrants.
The bill would pair approval of those border reforms with foreign aid to Israel and Ukraine, expenditures no responsible legislator should oppose in a dangerous world (though some Republicans, outrageously, are balking at the Ukraine funding).
Democrats, meanwhile, get nothing toward their top immigration priority of creating a path to citizenship for immigrants brought here as children and raised as Americans.
Progressives are trashing the agreement for that and other missing components. Genuinely conservative voices like The Wall Street Journal editorial page are hailing it as “the most restrictive migrant legislation in decades,†loaded with “reforms Trump never came close to getting.â€
In short, President Joe Biden — whether driven by dire poll numbers on the border issue, genuine determination to address the crisis, or some combination of both — has decided to embark on what is technically known in political negotiation jargon as giving away the store.
To which many Republicans are answering, bizarrely enough: Keep it.
Since most politicians not named Trump are hesitant to just declare outright that they’re willing to hurt America’s interests as a political strategy, most of them are resorting to strained, grasping excuses to explain their refusal to take “yes†for an answer.
Hawley, for example, complained on X (formerly Twitter) that the bill gives “taxpayer funded lawyers to illegal immigrants.†He’s referring to a provision that would provide lawyers for asylum-seeking unaccompanied minors younger than 14, at a cost of $350 million — a sliver of the roughly $20 billion in emergency spending in the bill, and a necessary provision for anyone serious about speeding up the asylum process.
In further commentary about the bill, Hawley tellingly aired his broader disdain for bipartisanship itself. In response to a comment by Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer that he and Republican leader Mitch McConnell worked closely on the agreement, Hawley tweeted: “That’s the problem.â€
The problem is leaders working across the aisle to address the border crisis? Missouri voters should ponder that attitude as Hawley seeks reelection this year. And voters across America should remember how thoroughly the GOP has now exposed its border obsession as a shameful political charade.