Some Congressional Republicans are already wary about a deal made behind closed doors that would shut down the border if crossings reached a certain level of illegal immigrants.
Lawmakers in the Senate established a deal on Friday that they intend to release in the next few days that would give President Joe Biden a new expulsion authority if the migrant encounters exceeded 4,000 a day over a one-week period. However, the specific details of the law have not been released, and some Republicans appear skeptical of the deal as a whole.
“What’s holding this up is that there isn’t a bill,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) told the Daily Mail. “We haven’t seen text. They’ve been negotiating it for about four months, and they won’t share it with us. Even after we raised those concerns, they still won’t share text with us. It’s just enough to raise some real red flags.”
Sens. Rick Scott (R-FL) and Todd Young (R-IN) echoed these remarks, requesting the text to be released so the bill’s particulars can be reviewed and decided on.
The House, on the other side, doesn’t want to be involved.
“If rumors about the contents of the draft proposal are true, it would have been dead on arrival in the House anyway,” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson wrote in response to the reports of this deal on Friday.
Johnson gestured toward the sweeping border bill that the House passed last year as the standard he intended to uphold. “Since the day I became Speaker, I have assured our Senate colleagues the House would not accept any counterproposal if it would not actually solve the problems that have been created by the administration’s subversive policies,” Johnson wrote.
Johnson has instead turned his focus toward impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
McConnell, meanwhile, has some doubts about the future of the legislation but has emphasized his commitment to the Ukraine-border package and assured reporters that he won’t shift on his support of it.
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Republicans also face pressure from former President Donald Trump to reject the border deal. Trump has implored Republicans to reject the border deal because it would give Biden a victory on immigration, an issue that Trump intends to prioritize in the upcoming election. Scott has also argued for the deal to be shared with the former president so he can prepare how he wants to enforce the issue if he is elected.
Biden slammed the Republicans who were implying that they would refuse to pass a bill, emphasizing that “If you’re serious about the border crisis, pass a bipartisan bill & I will sign it.”