Budget deal

Pass the compromise plan, but recognize its true costs to the Texas borderlands.

Americans have learned not to count as certain any federal budget deals until the ink is dry on the president’s signature, but it looks like Democrats and Republicans have hashed out a compromise to keep the government open past Friday’s deadline.

Whew.

The last thing our nation needs is another harmful and unnecessary game of political brinkmanship. Workers suffered enough during the recent 35-day partial government shutdown.

The current deal, as it has been described, includes roughly $1.4 billion for repairs and new fencing along the border and funding to detain thousands more individual migrants and families. It also would fund enhanced surveillance and other technology along the border.

Like most compromises, no one seems particularly pleased with this one — least of all President Trump, who on Tuesday called the bipartisan deal “sad” and though he provided no details said he’s busy “adding things,” though he had come around by late Tuesday. But GOP leaders in the Senate said the deal was likely the best available and urged the president to sign it even though it would provide less funding for a border wall than had been included in the preshutdown bill in 2018.

Art of the deal, this was not. Democrats caved on some of their core demands, too. Chief among them: They wanted to greatly reduce funding for an immigrant detention apparatus that already holds more people than the entire Canadian prison system. Instead, the bill could trigger a potential expansion of the facilities.

Nevertheless, we’re glad to see the government remain open. A vote in the House could come as soon as Wednesday night, and we urge Congress to pass the bill.

With that fight behind us, however, Democrats and Republicans can admit the whole shutdown crisis was unnecessary. What’s more, the wall funding itself continues to be little more than a fig leaf for a president determined to prove to his supporters he’s building it. The issues at the border present a challenge — one that we’re wellequipped to handle.

Undocumented crossings are at their lowest level in decades. Central American migrants can easily be processed through our welltested asylum system. And most cross-border drugs are moved through legal ports of entry — key nodes in our nation’s infrastructure that could use some improvements.

Once the bill is signed, as we hope it is, Congress must return to the hard work of comprehensive immigration reform. That includes security, yes, but also a path to permanent residency for millions of undocumented immigrants, including Dreamers who were brought here as children, and an update to our visa system that matches the needs of a 21st century economy.

So far, what Washington has given us is an increasingly militarized Rio Grande — and conditions that uniquely place a burden on Texas.

It is in our towns where migrant families are held in detention facilities, and in our streets where protesters march against inhumane treatment. Our freeways are dotted by border patrol inspection points and interstate road trips interrupted by warrantless searches. It is across our ranches, prairies and nature preserves where the wall — whether steel slats or razor wire — will be built.

The National Butterfly Center filed an emergency restraining order Monday night to halt the construction of a 38-mile border wall that could result in more than 30 million square feet of native Texas being clear-cut. You have to wonder if Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would be so gung-ho about the budget deal if it meant uprooting fields of Kentucky Bluegrass.

That sliver of our state between the physical barrier and the Rio Grande is just as much a part of Texas as the Alamo or the San Jacinto Battlefield, and it is being cut off with little consideration for the people who actually live there. We imagine that Trump would be much less passionate about the wall if it were slated to slice off a corner of Mar a Lago. The mere sight of wind turbines near one of his golf courses was enough to send him running for the courthouse.

So while the nation may celebrate the fact that Congress crafted a budget compromise — justifiably so — our borderland residents will have to confront the daily reality of a physical barrier built on American soil.

A part of our state will inevitably be sacrificed for the sake of a deal. But if that’s what must be done to prevent another devastating shutdown, then heed these words: Come and take it. Please.