Border security deal reached
WASHINGTON — Congressional negotiators announced an agreement late Monday to potentially prevent a government shutdown and finance construction of new barriers along the U.s.-mexico border, overcoming a late-stage hang-up over immigration enforcement issues that had threatened to scuttle the talks.
Republicans, desperate to avoid another shutdown, tentatively agreed to far less money for President Donald Trump’s border wall than the White House’s $5.7 billion wish list. Three people familiar with the deal said the accord would provide $1.375 billion to build 55 miles of new border barriers in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas.
That’s much less than what Trump demanded to build over 200 miles of wall along the Mexican boundary. The money will be for vertical steel slats called bollards, not a solid wall, and will repair and extend existing border barriers.
“We reached an agreement in principle,” said Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby, R-ala., appearing with a bipartisan group of House and Senate lawmakers who concurred.
Asked if Trump would back the deal, Shelby said, “We believe from our dealings with them and the latitude they’ve given us, they will support it. We certainly hope so.”
Democrats dropped their proposal to limit the number of detained immigrants caught inside the U.S. to a daily average of 16,500. Republicans opposed that demand. There is currently no such limit.
Bargainers agreed to fund 40,520 beds to detain immigrants entering or in the U.S. illegally. That’s the same number funded last year, though the actual figure held is around 49,000.
The sources described details of the agreement only on condition of anonymity. Details won’t be officially released until Tuesday, but the pact came in time to alleviate any threat of a second partial government shutdown this weekend — if Trump signs it.
Shelby had earlier pulled the plug on the talks over Democratic demands to limit immigrant detentions by federal authorities, but Democrats yielded ground on that issue in a fresh round of talks Monday.
Trump traveled to El Paso, Texas, for a campaign-style rally Monday night focused on immigration and border issues. He told the thousands at the rally that he was informed that lawmakers were making progress in their bid to avert another shutdown, but that he told his staff he didn’t want to hear about it and that it was important to speak “to my people from Texas” first.
Also in El Paso, Democrat U.S. Rep. Beto O’rourke marched with thousands of protesters through the streets, decrying the border wall that Trump was in town to promote.
Stopping every few steps to hug supporters, O’rourke led a group on a walk close to the border and along the city’s existing border fence. The group then traveled to a venue across a small side street from the arena where Trump held his rally.
At the president’s rally, Trump boasted about the size of his crowd versus that for O’rourke. Thousands attended O’rourke’s event, but Trump estimated the crowd at 200 or 300 people. “That may be the end of his presidential bid,” Trump said.
The ex-congressman is still deciding on a presidential run.
On Capitol Hill, Democrats carried more leverage into the talks after besting Trump on the 35-day shutdown but showed flexibility in hopes on winning Trump’s signature. After yielding on border barriers, Democrats focused on reducing funding for detention beds to curb what they see as unnecessarily harsh enforcement by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
The border debate got most of the attention, but it’s just part of a major spending measure to fund a bevy of Cabinet departments into August.
The negotiations hit a rough patch Sunday amid a dispute over curbing ICE, the federal agency that Republicans see as an emblem of tough immigration policies and Democrats accuse of often going too far.
The proposal to cap at 16,500 the number of detainees caught in areas away from the border — a limit Democrats say was aimed at preventing overreach by the agency — ran into its own Republican wall.
“ICE is being asked to ignore the laws that Congress has already passed,” said agency Deputy Director Matt Albence on a media call organized by the White House. “It will be extremely damaging to the public safety of this country. If we are forced to live within a cap based on interior arrests, we will immediately be forced to release criminal aliens that are currently sitting in our custody.”
According to ICE figures, 66 percent of the nearly 159,000 immigrants it reported detaining last year were previously convicted of crimes. Reflecting the two administration’s differing priorities, in 2016 under President Barack Obama, around 110,000 immigrants were detained and 86 percent had criminal records.
Few convictions that immigrants detained last year had on their records were for violent crimes. The most common were for driving while intoxicated, drugs, previous immigration convictions and traffic offenses.
The fact that it looked like there might be another shutdown brought renewed efforts for a deal Monday, Shelby said.
Rep. Nita Lowey of New York, the Democratic House Appropriations chairwoman, said: “Some people may think it’s a great deal. Some may feel differently. But we did it together.”
The pact also includes increases for new technologies such as advanced screening at border entry points, humanitarian aid sought by Democrats and additional customs officers.
Trump met Monday afternoon with top advisers in the Oval Office to discuss the negotiations. He softened his rhetoric on the wall but ratcheted it up when alluding to the detention beds issue.
“We can call it anything. We’ll call it barriers, we’ll call it whatever they want,” Trump said. “But now it turns out not only don’t they want to give us money for a wall, they don’t want to give us the space to detain murderers, criminals, drug dealers, human smugglers.”
The recent shutdown left more than 800,000 government workers without paychecks. Trump surrendered after the shutdown hit 35 days, agreeing to the current temporary reopening without getting money for the wall.