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 — along with save Ukraine before it runs out of ammunition. 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 substantive 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. There’s even $650 million to build a border wall, the sort of funding Democrats forced a 35day partial federal shutdown to prevent five years ago.

Democrats made concessions under pressure from public opinion: Fresh NBC polling shows 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 to help with deportations. 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 initiating an application. The bill would also empower asylum officers to rule on the merits of some applications earlier in the process.

Faster processing times would deter migrants: It currently takes about five to seven years to get a final decision on an asylum claim. A majority of applications are ultimately rejected, but in the meantime, these immigrants put down roots that make it harder to remove them. 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 dangerous journey.

The element of the agreement perhaps most misunderstood among Republicans is a Border Emergency Authority that would allow the president to turn away most asylum seekers if more than 5,000 people arrive daily, measured over the course of several days, which has been the case every week but one in the past four months. This goes further than the Title 42 authorities Trump and Biden invoked during the pandemic, restricting migrants who are turned away from reapplying for a year. Practically, this authority would end the migrant caravans.

With all these tough provisions, it will be tempting for some progressives to cave to their left flank and oppose the compromise. They shouldn’t. Democrats got several important sweeteners. The bill creates a new temporary visa to allow non-citizens 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 — raising the cap for the first time in three decades. The Border Emergency Authority sunsets after three years. The bill would provide government-mandated lawyers for all unaccompanied migrants 13 years old and under to help them navigate the system and offers $350 million to pay for it. Instead of getting rid of humanitarian parole altogether, the president would still be able to use parole at airports.

In exchange for the crackdown at the border, the supplemental package would provide $60.6 billion to support Ukraine and $14.1 billion in security assistance for Israel. The House plans to vote this week on a standalone bill for Israel, but that version includes no humanitarian aid to help Palestinians in Gaza. This does.

If this deal falls apart, the situation at the southern border will deteriorate. Inaction, combined with a fear across Latin America that Trump might prevail in November, could attract millions more migrants in the coming year. If Republicans really cared about curbing a migrant surge that they claim harms the country, rather than seeking political advantage by issuing such warnings, they would support this bill in droves.