Republicans will never get another border security deal this good

The Republican Party should take yes for an answer. By torpedoing the Senate’s bipartisan immigration deal, under pressure from former president Donald Trump to preserve his election-year advantage on a wedge issue, congressional Republicans would blow an opportunity to reduce undocumented immigration and curtail mass crossings at the southern border. The 370-page legislative text released Sunday night, promptly declared “dead on arrival” in the House by Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., emerged from months of discussions and careful compromises by all sides.

Sen. James Lankford, Okla., the lead Republican negotiator, notes that about 1 million people who crossed the southern border over the past four months would have been deported, rather than released into the United States, if this agreement had been in place. Limitations on the president’s power to grant humanitarian parole at land borders could stop more than half a million crossings annually, he says.

Democrats made concessions under pressure from public opinion: Fresh NBC polling shows Mr. Trump has a 35-point advantage over President Biden on immigration. But this window for dealmaking will close. Even if Republicans controlled the White House and Congress next year, the Senate filibuster would prevent them from having their way on the issue. Democrats will lose any incentive to deal if a president from their party no longer owns this problem.

This supplemental package would fund more than 4,300 new asylum officers and support staff, 100 additional immigration judge teams, 1,500 border patrol agents and customs officers, and 1,200 Immigration and Customs Enforcement staff. It would also provide detention capacity for 50,000 extra border crossers per year and more deportation flights. It would crack down on dubious asylum claims by raising the evidentiary standard for applications.

Adjudicating asylum claims faster would change the calculus for those deciding whether to spend their savings to travel to the United States. If they think they’ll get sent home after 90 days instead of 10 years, they’ll be less likely to embark on the journey.

Still, Democrats got several important sweeteners. The bill creates a new temporary visa to allow noncitizens to visit family in the United States, a pathway to citizenship for the children of H-1B visa holders and an additional 250,000 new family and work visas over the next five years. The bill would provide government-mandated lawyers for all unaccompanied migrants 13 years old and under to help them navigate the system.

If this deal falls apart, the situation at the southern border will deteriorate. If Republicans really cared about curbing a migrant surge that they claim harms the country, they would support this bill in droves.