Texas GOP critical, wary of wall deal

Some wait on Trump, who’s ‘not happy’ but doesn’t threaten veto

WASHINGTON — A tentative deal to avert a government shutdown without most of the money President Donald Trump sought to build a wall on the Mexican border left many Texas Republicans in Congress stone-faced on Tuesday.

The agreement drew fierce opposition from conservative groups and right-wing pundits, as well as a decidedly negative reaction from Trump. “I’m not happy about it,” he said flatly. “It’s not doing the trick.”

But Trump appeared to back off talk of another government shutdown, which remains a possibility at midnight Friday unless the White House and Congress bridge their differences over immigration and wall funding in a 2019 deal.

“I would hope that there won’t be a shutdown,” Trump said.

The deal provides less than $1.4 billion for physical barriers, below the $1.6 billion figure that Congress had agreed to in December. It also would fund about 55 miles of new border fencing, far less than the 200 miles Trump sought.

According to U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Laredo Democrat who was one of the House negotiators, all or almost all the new construction would be in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, a top priority for Customs and Border Patrol — with protections for the National Butterfly Center and other environmentally sensitive areas.

“It wasn’t easy at all,” Cuellar said in an interview Tuesday. “But I always felt that if there was no outside interference (from Trump or Republican and Democratic Party leaders) we could work something out.”

The final deal, which jettisoned Democratic demands to limit immigrant detention, is not likely to please lawmakers on the far left or right, Cuellar predicted.

But the strongest pushback came from conservatives who felt that Democrats gave in very little

to Trump’s demand for $5.7 billion in wall funding.

Freshman San Antonio Republican Chip Roy, who worked for both Texas U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, said the deal does not come close to addressing the concerns conservatives have been voicing about the border.

“Congress is moving forward with a profoundly unserious approach to a very real humanitarian crisis,” Roy said in a statement to Hearst Newspapers. “We are failing to do our basic job to shore up our sovereignty and ensure our nation is secure.”

Both Cornyn and Cruz, however, refrained on Tuesday from specific public statements about the deal. Cornyn said he was still going through the terms.

“I know we’re all eager to see the final details of the agreement and to learn exactly what was included,” he said. “I hope that this agreement takes into account what we’ve reportedly heard from the experts that smart border security is a combination of barriers, technology and personnel. I also hope it includes funding for our ports of entry to promote the legal movement of goods and people across the border without compromising security.”

Some in GOP wait for signals

Cruz took to Twitter to call for a border wall, though he stopped short of attacking the agreement: “What we need to do isn’t complicated ... Stop the human traffickers. Stop the drug traffickers. And #BuildTheWall!”

Cruz also resurrected his longshot bill, dubbed the “El Chapo Act,” that would use drug profits forfeited by the notorious Mexican drug lord Joaquín Guzmán Loera, who was convicted Tuesday in a federal court in New York on charges related to running a longtime criminal enterprise.

Another outspoken proponent of a wall, freshman Houston Republican Dan Crenshaw, called the $1.37 billion for physical barriers “a step in the right direction.” He also balked at the Democrats’ push to limit detention beds, accusing them of “simply asking for less enforcement and less security in order to secure themselves a political win against the president.”

Absent any clear signal from the White House about Trump’s backing, many GOP lawmakers remained silent on the agreement, which was worked out by House and Senate negotiators from both parties.

Republicans leaders, however, were reportedly pressing Trump to sign on and avert a relapse of the unpopular 35-day shutdown that left some 800,000 federal workers furloughed or working without pay.

In a speech on the Senate floor, GOP Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called the agreement an improvement over some of the Democrats’ earlier negotiating positions, which he termed extreme.

“The notion that Congress shouldn’t spend more than ‘1 dollar’ on new border barriers, and the idea that we should impose a hard, statutory cap on (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) detainees in the interior of the country, which would require the release of criminals into the United States — fortunately, my Democrat colleagues did abandon those unreasonable positions, and the negotiations were able to move forward productively,” he said.

McConnell’s endorsement signaled that, barring some new obstacle, the deal will likely be put to a vote in the Senate this week, a potential test of Republican resolve of Trump’s wall promise, which originally came with a proviso that Mexico would pay for it.

Texas Republican Kay Granger, who also helped negotiate the “agreement in principle,” told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram on Monday that the deal makes good on Trump’s wall promise, “if you want to call it a wall.”

Tea party angry

But as the details emerged, there were growing signs of disenchantment among conservative groups outside of Congress.

A strongly worded statement from the Tea Party Patriots described leader and frequent Cruz associate Jenny Beth Martin as needing to “pick herself up off the floor” after reading some of the terms of the congressional agreement.

“This so-called ‘deal’ is worse than a joke,” Martin said. “It does not even begin to address the very real crisis at our southern border and continues to play politics with our national security. The paltry funding for physical barriers and for detention beds is ridiculous.”

Close Trump media allies Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter also came out against the bargain, with Coulter calling it a “Yellow New Deal” — a play on the left’s “Green New Deal” climate change initiative.

Not all of the opposition came from the right. Some Texas environmentalists and others opposed to Trump’s wall moved to oppose it. The National Butterfly Center, which lies along a levee where the Trump administration plans to build a wall, filed for a temporary restraining order against the federal government on Monday evening as Trump was in El Paso rallying support for his border policies.

Other wall opponents expressed guarded optimism about averting another government shutdown.

“I’m glad about the prospects of being able to reach an agreement to make sure that President Trump doesn’t shut down the government again,” said San Antonio Democrat Joaquin Castro, who, like others, said he was waiting for details. “At the same time, people in Texas are very much against any kind of border wall or fencing, and as I understand it, the new fencing may go up in the Rio Grande Valley.”

Some analysts said that given the Democrats’ control of the House, the deal was the best Trump could get in the current Congress. While some saw it as capitulation, the White House hinted that the deal with Democratic leaders might not be the end of the story.

Some media reports suggested that White House is working to finalize a new plan to redirect federal dollars to pay for the border wall. According to Politico, funding sources reportedly include two Army Corps of Engineers’ flood control projects in Northern California and disaster relief funds intended for California and Puerto Rico — but not Texas. Officials also are reportedly considering using military construction funds.

Although Trump has threatened to go around Congress and use emergency powers to tap more wall funds, that idea has been discouraged by Cornyn and other top GOP leaders. But White House officials have said in recent days that more money might be available for wall construction without declaring a national emergency, which would almost certainly be challenged in court.

“There’s pots of money where presidents, all presidents, have access without a national emergency,” Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said on “Meet the Press” Sunday.

Said Trump on Tuesday: “The wall’s getting built, regardless.”