Democrats Mount New Push on Border Deal in Effort To Paint Republicans as Soft on Immigration

Democrats — in an effort to go on the offensive on the issue where voters trust them least — want to paint Republicans as soft on immigration by reviving the failed bipartisan border security and asylum reform deal negotiated in the Senate earlier this year. Senator Schumer could bring the legislation up for a vote in the coming weeks in the hopes of pressuring his GOP colleagues. The deal was negotiated over the course of nearly four months between Senator Murphy for the Democrats, Senator Lankford for the Republicans, and Senator Sinema, the Arizona independent. The bill would have given the Biden administration more power to shut down the border when there was a surge of migrants both at ports of entry and when illegally entering areas not designated for crossing. It was endorsed by the Wall Street Journal editorial board, the Chamber of Commerce, and even the Trump-supporting border patrol union. Mr. Schumer says it is Republicans who are running from the work of legislating in order to appease President Trump and to save a winning issue for the fall elections. “91 days ago, Senate Republicans filibustered the strongest, most comprehensive border security bill Congress has seen in a generation, and they did it for one reason only: Donald Trump — hell-bent on using the border for political gain — told them to do so,” Mr. Schumer said at a press conference Wednesday. “It’s disgraceful, and the American people know it. They support the Democratic position on [the] border,” he continued. “Every poll … shows that people support us by significant margins. So, we are on our front foot, and we’re taking it to them.”Axios reports that Mr. Schumer is “seriously considering” putting the legislation up for another vote by the end of May. When the Senate first voted on the package in February, it failed to reach the 60-vote threshold to break the filibuster to allow debate to begin. One of those conservatives who came out strongly against the bill was Senator Lee, who said the legislation would only “worsen” the border crisis. In a statement, the Utah senator said it gave too much leeway to asylum seekers who needed only to describe a “credible fear” of harm in their home countries in order to gain access to America, which Mr. Lee felt was vague and would allow migrants to lie at the border without providing evidence of their fear. The bill would have also only forced a shutdown of the border if there were 8,500 crossings a day, or 5,000 a day on average over the course of a week. “Even during a border emergency, this bill requires the administration to process a minimum of 1,400 illegal immigrants a day. This is 400 more per day than Obama’s DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson said constituted a crisis in 2019,” Mr. Lee said in his statement. House Republican leadership said in a joint statement that the “shutdown” authority was far too broad and allowed far too many migrants into the country. “The so-called ‘shutdown’ authority in the bill is anything but, riddled with loopholes that grant far too much discretionary authority to Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas — who has proven he will exploit every measure possible, in defiance of the law, to keep the border open,” House leadership wrote. Speaking at a press conference with Mr. Schumer, Mr. Murphy said Republicans are “addicted to using the issue of immigration as a political tool.”“They are allergic to solving the problem,” he continued. “Republicans demanded that we begin a bipartisan process to try to come up with some solutions to our broken border. For four months, we crafted that compromise requested by Republicans, led by their appointed negotiator — a hardline senator on the issue of immigration.”“We produced the most significant, toughest, bipartisan border security bill in 40 years, and 24 hours later — after Donald Trump told them to kill the bill because he wanted the border to remain a mess — the bill failed on the Senate floor,” Mr. Murphy said. The Connecticut senator acknowledged that the increase of illegal crossings and asylum seekers at the border represents a huge problem for Americans in every region, but also says that it is only the Democratic party that is willing to fix the problem. “We have a piece of legislation that is bipartisan and will do the job,” he said. One of the few Republicans to vote for the border legislation, Senator Murkowski, told reporters after the vote that she could not comprehend why her colleagues could not get on board with a bipartisan solution that was well-constructed. “I have a difficult time understanding again how anyone else in the future is going to want to be on that negotiating team — on anything — if we are going to be against it,” the senator from Alaska told CNN. “I’ve gone through the multiple stages of grief. Today I’m just pissed off.”After working on the legislation for nearly four months, the bipartisan negotiators were stunned to see their Republican Senate colleagues and the House GOP leadership dismiss the proposal within minutes of the text being released. On February 4, the three senators who negotiated the legislation released the text of the bill and held a call with members of the press to discuss the details. While that press call was happening, Republican senators began announcing online that they would not support the legislation, and Speaker Johnson quickly released a statement with House Republican leadership to say the bill was “dead on arrival” in the lower chamber. The next day, one of Mr. Murphy’s best friends in the body, Senator Schatz, told the Sun that the press should dog Republican lawmakers for failing to even seriously consider the bill for more than five minutes. “They should be ashamed of themselves. The question from reporters should be: ‘how do you wake up in the morning, shave your face, put on a suit, and call yourself a senator?’” Mr. Schatz said.

Democrats Mount New Push on Border Deal in Effort To Paint Republicans as Soft on Immigration

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