by Alexis Simendinger & Kristina Karisch | The Hill
President Biden and a partisan group of senators this week may gain some traction to wield immigration reforms as a direct challenge to House conservatives and to former President Trump.
“I’d rather have no bill than a bad bill,” Trump said Saturday while pledging to close the border, if elected. The White House and a trio of senators could unveil an agreement as early as this week, CBS News reports, despite House GOP promises to block any pending deal, as yet unseen by lawmakers. The House returns to work today in the Capitol, ahead of proposed bipartisan Senate ideas to reduce unprecedented levels of illegal crossings recorded along the southern border in the past three years.
DEMOCRATS ARE LOOKING for border changes that can call House Republicans’ bluff about addressing some of the most prominent U.S. policy problems identified by voters nationwide. The GOP began the year by leveraging demands for enhanced national security at the border as a condition to weigh support for additional U.S. aid to Ukraine. Assistance to Kyiv is in limbo and going nowhere in the House, despite bipartisan backing among leaders in the Senate.
Biden, after years of downplaying a border crisis and eager to undercut Trump’s election-year appeal, now says he would shut down migrant traffic at the border if the Senate sends him a reasonable deal.
“If that bill were the law today, I’d shut down the border right now and fix it quickly,” the president said while campaigning in South Carolina.
Shortly after taking office in 2021, Biden said he would unwind the Trump administration’s restrictive immigration policies and he sent Congress legislation that has since languished that would create pathways to citizenship for millions of immigrants living in the United States. Both moves still attracted criticism from members of his own party.
LEGISLATIVE FIXES crafted primarily by Republican Sen. James Lankford (Okla.) — under censure pressure in his home state by the GOP — along with Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy (Conn.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) would grant the executive branch new legal authority to effectively suspend asylum in between official ports of entry when migrant crossings surpass certain thresholds, according to reporting.
The attempt to politicize lack of action by the republicans
Murphy told CNN Sunday, “We are sort of finalizing the last pieces of text right now. This bill could be ready to be on the floor of the United States Senate next week. But it won’t be if Republicans decide that they want to keep this issue unsettled for political purposes.”
Provisions of a Senate approach could impact remote areas in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas where migrants regularly cross into the U.S. illegally to surrender themselves to federal officials, who often release them under provisions of current law.
▪ The Hill: The U.S. border’s political value weighs on policy talks in Washington.
▪ USA Today: Almost every state with a Republican governor signed a statement last week backing Texas in its fight with the federal government over border control.
▪ The Hill: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is bedeviled as Trump and the GOP move the border goalposts.
Meanwhile, the GOP-led House Homeland Security Committee on Sunday unveiled articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and will meet Tuesday. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) says the House will vote on impeaching Mayorkas “as soon as possible.” The election-year drive to purge the secretary from the Cabinet is not expected to advance in the Senate.
3 THINGS TO KNOW TODAY
- Republican legislatures in some states are trying to keep abortion off the ballot. Since 2022, voters in seven states moved to protect abortion rights or defeated attempts to curtail them in statewide votes.
- Bolts needed to secure part of an Alaska Airlines jet that blew off in midair appear to have been missing when the plane left Boeing’s factory, industry officials said.
- Investigators sought Jeff Bezos’ tax return leaker; they stumbled upon Donald Trump’s.
