President Joe Biden‘s declaration that he is prepared to “shut down” the border if given new authorities by Congress underscores the shifting public sentiment on immigration as migrant crossings break new daily records.

The emerging border compromise being negotiated in the Senate represents a possible escape hatch to the crisis, allowing Biden to address the border, both in practice and rhetorically.

But opposition to that bill in the Republican-led House, plus the chamber’s efforts to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas, Biden’s secretary of homeland security, reflect a fraction of the pressure the president faces on an issue that could sink him electorally.

The other part of the equation is the progressive backlash if Biden goes too far in clamping down on the border crossings.

The reality of that circumstance is “slapping” Biden “in the face” following his original approach of “I’m not going to be Trump” and undoing “everything” his predecessor did, according to Ana Rosa Quintana-Lovett, the senior director of policy at the Vandenberg Coalition.

“They’re recognizing, OK, there’s something we have to do here, but their progressive base is not going to let them do that without paying a price,” Quintana-Lovett told the Washington Examiner. “So, if you’re Biden, you can just make it seem like, ‘Well, I am going to claim that I’m going to work with Congress and wait for Congress to tell me what to do.’ But in reality, he doesn’t need congressional action to fix the border crisis whatsoever.”

“I think this is more like them wanting to say like, ‘Well, we can fix, we can kind of alleviate what’s happening at the border, we can take the issue away from Republicans, and also we can continue highlighting how extremist Republicans are keeping me from doing, from fulfilling my agenda,” she said.

Quintana-Lovett, the former Western Hemisphere staff director to House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX), encapsulated the politics at play as House Republicans, and even former President Donald Trump, attempt to sink the Senate border compromise, which conservatives say would not actually solve the crisis despite its changes to asylum and new expulsion authority.

She repeated the growing sense of House Republicans that Biden can address the border using executive authority. Biden has requested $14 billion to tackle the southern border but has also agreed to policy changes demanded by Senate Republicans.

“They’re seeking additional funding to continue the processing and the movement when in reality, they can say, ‘Well, we still have the Migration Protection Protocols,’” Quintana-Lovett said of the Trump-era policy better known as “Remain in Mexico.”

“They are not fully operational, but that’s the law,” she added. “They can send people to wait in Mexico, pending the adjudication of their asylum claim. They still have authorities to continue expelling people, but they just choose to not do it. This isn’t a matter of resources. I mean, to a degree, sure, for, like, additional border barriers and some technology, but we don’t have a resource issue. We have a rule and executive order issue.”

For Elaine Kamarck, founding director of the Brookings Institution’s Center for Effective Public Management, the border and immigration policy debate is “totally polarized,” but she argued it was because of “particularly extreme” Republicans, including Trump, who has publicly urged Republicans to walk away from the deal.

“The president has come a long way towards the Republicans on this, so much so that many in his party are mad at him for doing it,” Kamarck said. “But there is a big problem to be solved, and people have to get together and solve it. The rhetoric that comes out of the Freedom Caucus and of Donald Trump is basically, ‘Oh, don’t do anything. That’s an open border bill.’ And that, of course, is nonsense.”

“There’s been a shift on how he’s thinking about the border and how he’s talking about the border,” she said of Biden. “That shift has been prompted by the fact that we have an unprecedented crisis at the border.”

Kamarck defended Biden’s prioritizing the border funding over executive action because the negotiations are tied to his larger request for security assistance to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. She similarly stood by the president’s immigration policies, attributing the “untenable” situation to “massive government failures” in Central America, Latin America, and around the world, as well as improvements in information technology.

“Republicans are caught in their own hypocrisy when they rail about the border, and then they don’t appropriate money … enough money for DHS to secure the border,” she concluded.

For two consecutive days, the White House has attempted to undermine Republican complaints about Biden and executive power, circulating a memo and statement about Mike Johnson (R-LA) in which it claims the speaker is attempting to have it both ways.

“Presidents either currently have the legal authority necessary to secure the border (and Speaker Johnson has asserted for over six years that they do not), or presidents need additional legal authority to secure the border,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates wrote Tuesday.

At the same time, Biden and his aides have been repeatedly asked why the president has not considered using executive action related to the border.

“I’ve done all I can do,” Biden told reporters Tuesday. “Just give me the power. I’ve asked from the very day I got into office. Give me the Border Patrol. Give me the people — give me the people, the judges. Give me the people who can stop this and make it work right.”

Shortly afterward, Olivia Dalton, another White House spokeswoman, conceded there were “things that are within his power,” but there were “things that are not,” emphasizing, “We’re in the middle of negotiating in good faith across the aisle with Democrats and Republicans in the Senate.”

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“We think that there’s no reason we can’t come to a very significant deal here that, again, would be historic in nature that would deliver on meaningful reforms and resources that would help us secure the border,” Dalton said. “That’s the stated goal of both Republicans and Democrats in Congress. What’s standing in the way? We don’t think politics should.”

Biden reiterated how he would “shut down” the border if his funding deal were law twice last week, first in a statement and then during his address to the South Carolina Democratic Party’s First in the Nation Dinner, held before the first sanctioned Democratic presidential primary there this Saturday.