Sen. Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and majority leader, plans to advance a second vote this week on a bipartisan border surveillance bill that Senate Republicans rejected earlier this year at the urging of former President Donald J. Trump.
The measure is almost certain to be blocked again, but Democrats are hoping to use the failed vote to sharpen election-year contrast with Republicans on a critical issue that polls show poses a major potential liability for President Biden and his colleagues represents candidates.
Democrats will try to neutralize the issue by showing voters that they and Mr. Biden have tried to control migration at the U.S. border with Mexico but have been repeatedly thwarted by Republicans who have followed the example of Followed Mr. Trump.
“The former president made it clear that he would prefer to keep the issue for his campaign rather than resolve it in a bipartisan way,” Mr. Schumer wrote in a letter to his colleagues announcing the bill’s provisions and laying out his plans. “On cue, many of our Republican colleagues abruptly reversed course from their previous support and announced their newfound opposition to the bipartisan proposal.”
After months of negotiations, Republicans and Democrats agreed in February to an unlikely immigration compromise — one that Republican lawmakers had insisted on as a prerequisite for providing additional aid to Ukraine — that appeared to have a chance of passage. But Mr. Trump called it too weak and instructed his allies in Congress to reject it. The measure failed when it failed to reach the 60 votes needed to advance in the Senate and all but four Republicans voted to block it. (In the 50-49 vote, three Democrats and one independent also voted “no,” denying the measure even a simple majority.)
Mr. Biden, whose team helped craft the deal, called for his support in a statement from White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Monday: “We strongly support this legislation and urge all senators to vote in a partisan manner “Leave politics aside and vote to secure the border.”
Later in the day, the White House released its summary of conversations the president had with Speaker Mike Johnson and Sen. Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, in which he urged them to “act quickly to pass this bipartisan border bill that “It would add thousands of border residents.” Patrol officers and personnel are investing in technology to catch fentanyl, fight drug trafficking and make our country safer.”
Among other changes to immigration law, the measure would make it harder to obtain asylum in the United States and increase detention and deportation of people who enter the country without authorization. Additionally, the border would be effectively closed entirely if the average number of migrants encountered by immigration officials exceeds a certain threshold — an average of 5,000 over the course of a week or 8,500 on a given day. The bill would also give the president the authority to unilaterally close the border if the number of migrant encounters reaches an average of 4,000 per day over the course of a week.
While border crossings have declined significantly in recent months, the average number per day exceeded those thresholds in March at just over 6,000, according to Customs and Border Protection. Polls show Americans are deeply concerned about the state of the southern border.
The compromise measure was negotiated by Senator James Lankford, Republican of Oklahoma; Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut; and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, independent of Arizona. Mr. Murphy joined Mr. Schumer in a news conference last week to announce he was reintroducing the bill.
“If Republicans think this situation at the border is an emergency, then let’s give them one more chance to do the right thing,” Murphy said.
Republicans quickly signaled they would block the bill again.
“This ‘border security law’ does not secure the border. In Biden’s hands it would make the border far LESS secure,” Sen. Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, wrote on social media. “I’ll go ‘Hell no!’ voices.”
“Should it reach the House, the bill would be immediately dead,” Mr. Johnson and the rest of the House Republican leadership team wrote in a joint statement.
Mr. Lankford spoke out on the Senate floor last week against Mr. Schumer’s plan to revisit the bill he helped negotiate, calling the move political.
“Why are we doing this?” Mr Lankford said. “All Americans see it. Everyone can see that this is political.”
Mr. Lankford pointed to a memo written by his Democratic colleagues that blamed the border bill’s failure on Rep. Tom Suozzi, a Democrat, helping to flip a seat in New York.
“The bill that I worked on with Senator Murphy and Senator Sinema – we will not be able to pass it,” Mr. Lankford said. “So let’s find the sections we can pass. The worst case scenario is doing nothing. That’s what we’re doing right now.”
Mr. Biden has been considering issuing an executive order for months to prevent people who enter the United States illegally from seeking asylum.
But on Monday, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas said the bill up for a vote in the Senate this week “offers more tools” than any executive action currently under consideration and that any unilateral move by the president would be up for grabs In any case, no legal challenge would meet with any resistance.
“The legislation therefore provides a level of stability, security and endurance,” Mr. Mayorkas told a group of reporters at the Department of Homeland Security headquarters. “So legislation is needed.”
Carl Hulse, Michael D. Shear and Zolan Kanno-Youngs contributed reporting.
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2024-05-21 00:47:45
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