WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON (AP) —
President Joe Biden urged Congress on Friday to embrace a bipartisan deal in the Senate to combine border enforcement measures with aid to Ukraine, but House Speaker Mike Johnson suggested the compromise on border and immigration policy in his chamber’ dead on arrival’ could be.
The Democratic president said in a statement late Friday that the proposed policy would be “the toughest and fairest set of border security reforms we have ever had in our country.” He also said he would use a new emergency authority to “close the border” if authorities were overwhelmed by an influx of migrants as soon as he could sign it into law.
Biden’s embrace of the deal — and Republican resistance — could mark an election-year shift in immigration politics. Still, the dwindling prospects for passage in Congress could have far-reaching consequences for U.S. allies around the world.
Senate Republicans had initially pushed for border policy changes to be included in Biden’s $110 billion emergency request for funding for Ukraine, Israel, immigration enforcement and other national security needs. But the deal in the Senate was threatened this week when it came under fire from Republicans, including Donald Trump, the presumptive presidential nominee, who dismissed the deal as a political “gift” to Democrats.
Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, sent a letter to his colleagues on Friday joining hardline conservatives determined to abandon the compromise. He said the legislation would have been “dead on arrival in the House” if leaked reports about it were true.
A core group of senators who negotiated the deal hoped to release the text early next week, but conservatives already say the measures do not go far enough to limit immigration. The proposal would implement stricter standards for migrants seeking asylum and deny asylum claims at the border if daily encounters with migrants become unmanageable for authorities.
“Rather than accept responsibility, President Biden is now trying to blame Congress for what HE himself has deliberately created,” Johnson said in the letter.
The message added to the headwinds facing the Senate deal, capping a week in which Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell acknowledged to his colleagues that the legislation faced tough opposition from Trump that could force them to pursue aid to Ukraine in a different way. He later made it clear that he was still in favor of combining border measures with aid to Ukraine.
The legislation’s dwindling prospects could leave congressional leaders without a clear path to approving tens of billions of dollars for Ukraine. Biden has made it a top priority to strengthen Kiev’s defenses against Russia, but his administration has run out of money to send munitions and missiles. Supporters of Ukraine warn that the stalemate in Congress is already being felt on the battlefields, leaving Ukrainian soldiers out of harm’s way.
Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, the lead GOP negotiator in the border talks, has repeatedly urged lawmakers not to make a final judgment on the bill until they receive legislative text, saying some reports about its contents in conservative media are not an accurate representation of the law. the bill.
The Republican speaker was already deeply skeptical of any bipartisan compromise on border policy. On Friday, he again pointed to a sweeping set of immigration measures passed by the House of Representatives last year in response to the country’s border problems. But that bill didn’t get a single Democratic vote then and has virtually no chance of getting Democratic support now, which would be necessary to clean up the Senate.
As they enter an election year, Republicans are trying to make the case that historic numbers of migrants have come to the U.S. during Biden’s presidency. His administration has countered that global unrest is driving migration and has tried to implement humane border enforcement policies.
“Securing the border through these negotiations is a victory for America,” Biden said in the statement. “For anyone demanding stricter border controls, this is the way to do it.”
Still, the speaker leaned on immigration policy, saying in his letter that the House of Representatives would hold a vote on impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas “as soon as possible” after a committee files articles of impeachment against him next week . Johnson also said he stood with Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who has refused to allow federal Border Patrol agents access to a riverside park that is a popular corridor for migrants entering the US illegally.
But Johnson himself is also under potential pressure.
If the Senate were to pass an immigration and Ukraine package, it would have to make a decision on whether to bring the measure to the floor. And while the speaker is skeptical about further financing of Ukraine, he has also expressed support for halting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s advance in Europe.
At the same time, House conservatives have become outspoken opponents of any compromise on immigration policy. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right Republican from Georgia, has threatened to attempt to impeach Johnson if he presents the deal in the House of Representatives.
“This bill represents Republican leadership in the Senate waging war against Republican leadership in the House of Representatives,” Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, said at a news conference this week.
Still, other Republicans have lamented that conservatives are throwing away an opportunity to score a victory on an issue they have talked about far more than Democrats.
Opposition from the right has hampered efforts to reform immigration law in Congress for decades. Trump allies have argued that Congress does not need to act because presidents already have sufficient authority to implement tough border measures.
Johnson echoed that sentiment in his letter, arguing that Biden could solve the border problems “with the stroke of a pen.”
Sen. Markwayne Mullin, a Republican from Oklahoma, said earlier this month that conservative reports of the bill had “turned a large portion of base voters against the proposals, even though the policy meant meaningful changes in immigration enforcement.”
“This is a national security issue,” Mullin said. “And if you wait until a new president takes office, you are playing politics with it.”
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Associated Press writer Aamer Madhani contributed.