WASHINGTON — The Senate rejected for the second time a border security package that Republicans helped craft in February before reversing it and kill it at the request of the former president Donald Trumptheir presumptive nominee for 2024, who declined to give President Joe Biden an election year victory.
Only Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska.) voted in favor of bringing the measure forward on Thursday. Several progressive Democrats also opposed the bill.
The legislation would give the president new emergency authority to restrict border crossings if daily average encounters with migrants reach a certain level, raise the standard of proof for granting asylum, speed up asylum processing and give more money to Border Patrol agents, among other measures.
Republican senators accused the Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (DN.Y.) to play politics by scheduling a vote on a bill they had previously rejected, an effort they say was actually aimed at strengthening the campaigns of vulnerable Democratic incumbents in the Senate.
“This bill today is a statement of support, it’s purely a vote for a message and a fundraising piece for the Democrats to be able to run out and say, ‘Look, we want to do border security and those rogue Republicans don’t want to do it.’ . That is absolutely absurd,” said Senator. James Lanford (R-Okla.) said Thursday on Newsmax.
Lankford, who helped negotiate the border provisions with a small bipartisan group earlier this year, previously complained about his GOP colleagues abandoning a proposed border crackdown endorsed by the conservative Border Patrol union. He did not deny the actual content of the legislation, which he voted for in February and against on Thursday.
“We need to come together, stop the politics, the reporting and the fundraising emails from Democrats going around about this, and let’s actually solve the problem,” Lankford said.
Democrats, meanwhile, criticized the GOP for walking away from one of the best opportunities to pass bipartisan reforms to address the influx of migrants at the border, something Republicans have called an urgent crisis for years.
“It would have happened if Donald Trump hadn’t said, ‘I don’t want this to happen, blame me, I want chaos at the border so I can win re-election,’” Schumer said ahead of Thursday’s vote.
“That’s not what the American people want. The polling data is clearly on our side,” he argued.
The situation at the border is rose rose to the top of voters’ minds over the past year, chasing Biden’s presidency and leading in the polls. Democrats hope to blunt Republican attacks across the border by highlighting their obstruction to real reforms in Congress. The White House is also considering a series of executive orders aimed at stemming the flow of migrants at the border, but any meaningful action will require legislation.
Next month, Senate Democrats will make a mistake by scheduling votes on legislation to protect abortion rights and contraceptives. They too will likely fail. The Senate is in full election mode, with little chance of real legislation between now and after November.
Several Democrats who supported the border bill in February when it was linked to crucial aid to Ukraine and Israel voted Thursday not to advance it as a standalone measure. The new border law lacked citizenship options for undocumented immigrants, which had been the prize for Democrats in previous bipartisan immigration bills.
The bill will “bar people fleeing violence and persecution from seeking asylum and instead double down on failed anti-immigrant policies that encourage illegal immigration,” Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) said in a statement.
“This cannot be the new starting point for immigration negotiations,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-California), who opposed both the bill and the previous version, told HuffPost.
Meanwhile, Murkowski, who also supported the border bill earlier this year, expressed his frustration with border politics by calling the whole exercise “stupid.”
“How would you explain this to an 11-year-old?” Murkowski asked before summarizing the GOP flip-flop on the border package. “I supported something because I think it would help us improve our laws, but we backed away from that because there were some who thought it would be more important to use it as a message against their opponents, and so we have it was not brought forward.”
As a result, she said Democrats are now “going to use it in a way to maybe get some of their troubled incumbents into a better place, but they don’t really think they can pass it, so it’s just messages on their website.” side.”
“Explain to someone who is not part of this building what is going on. They think we’re crazy. They say: can you just fix the border? Murkowski said.
