WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Joe Biden on Monday urged Republican leaders in the House of Representatives and Senate to support a revived bipartisan border security bill, even as House Speaker Mike Johnson declared the bill would be “dead on arrival.”
Democrats are again trying to pass the Border Act, which they say would reform U.S. asylum laws, hire thousands of border agents and help curb fentanyl smuggling.
Record numbers of migrants have been caught crossing the U.S.-Mexico border since Biden took office in 2021, and border security has become one of the top issues in the presidential campaign ahead of the Nov. 5 election, pitting Biden against former presidents will appear. President Donald Trump.
In February, a version of the bill stalled in the Senate after Trump told Republicans not to support it even though it included several border security measures they had sought. Biden and other Democrats said Trump undermined the bill to keep the border debate alive during the campaign.
Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer announced Sunday that the Senate would try to pass the new bill this week, after which the White House said it strongly supports the legislation.
In the president’s calls to Johnson and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Biden asked Republicans in Congress to “stop playing politics” and pass the legislation quickly, the White House said.
Before the president reached out, leaders of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives called the bill politically motivated.
“If it reached the House of Representatives, the bill would be dead on arrival,” Johnson and other Republicans said in a statement.
Previous legislation was tied to U.S. foreign aid to Ukraine and Israel, but this bill would stand alone, Schumer said.
(Reporting by Nandita Bose in Washington and Daniel Trotta in Carlsbad, California; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)
