Cornyn voices concerns on border deal
WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. John Cornyn says he has “serious concerns” about the border security bill the Senate is expected to vote on this week — a significant shift for the Texas Republican who was one of the most vocal supporters of the monthslong negotiations that led to the package.
It is a sign of growing resistance to the $118 billion package, unveiled Sunday night, that pairs an overhaul of the country’s asylum system and new presidential powers to turn away migrants at the border with aid to Ukraine, Israel and other allies. The bill, set to get a Senate vote this week, has angered those on the left and the right, and House GOP leaders say they won’t give it a vote in the chamber.
Cornyn, a top Senate Republican who in the past has been a key player in long-shot legislation on guns and more, spent months cheering the negotiations and urging his GOP colleagues to capitalize on a “point of maximum leverage” as Democrats were willing to deliver tougher border policies in exchange for aid to Ukraine.
But after seeing the result of those negotiations, Cornyn appears to be backing off.
“Now that I have seen text, I have questions and serious concerns,” Cornyn said in a statement to the conservative news outlet Breitbart.
Cornyn later told reporters in San Antonio that he is still reading the bill and has not made a decision on how he will vote. He said that if it makes “incrementally a better situation ... that’s something I think I should consider.”
“My biggest apprehension is that, given the fact that President Biden has not used the current laws that are in effect, I worry that he will do this with this new set of proposals,” Cornyn said, according to the Texas Tribune.
The package is expected to get an initial Senate vote Wednesday and needs to draw support from 60 senators to clear a filibuster. President Joe Biden urged the Senate to pass the bill, saying it includes “the toughest and fairest set of border reforms in decades.”
The deal would toughen asylum standards by excluding migrants who could have found safety by resettling in their home country or another nation, and would seek to speed up decisions in those cases by hiring more judges and creating a 15-day detention window in which they are expected to receive an initial screening. Those who clear the screening would be admitted to the country and given work permits for 90 days before a final decision.
The legislation includes funding to increase detention capacity and boost deportation flights. It would also create a new emergency authority similar to Title 42 that would allow the Department of Homeland Security to immediately turn away migrants crossing between ports of entry if those crossings average 4,000 per day over seven days. It would automatically kick in if the average daily crossings tops 5,000 or if more than 8,500 crossings are logged in a single day. Crossings surpassed a record 10,000 per day in December.
U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona independent who negotiated the bill, wrote on social media that the authority “would have been in effect every day of 2024.”
“The border would be closed,” she wrote. “Instead, the vast majority of migrants approaching the border claim asylum & are released into the country w/ [notice to appear] for years away from today. Our bill ends this broken system.”
Biden has vowed to use the authority “the day I sign the bill into law.”
Conservatives, including U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, have been critical of the negotiations for weeks, with many saying it allows for too many crossings before the government could begin turning away migrants.
Before he had even seen the final text of the bill, Cruz called it an “absolute mess” and a “steaming pile of (expletive)" on his podcast. He complained that the bill “effectively normalizes” 5,000 crossings a day by making it the bar to begin turning away asylum seekers.
On Monday, Cruz wrote on social media that it would “codify Biden’s open borders into perpetuity.”
“Terrible for Texas, but DC Dems love it,” Cruz wrote.
U.S. Sen. James Lankford, an Oklahoma Republican who led negotiations on the bill, defended it on Fox News, saying no one would have believed that under a Democratic president, the GOP would have a shot at adding detention beds, increasing deportation flights, creating a new border lockdown trigger and tightening asylum laws.
“Are we as Republicans going to have press conferences and complain the border is bad and then intentionally leave it open?” Lankford said. “Are we going to just complain about things or are we going to actually address and change as many things as we can?”