A bipartisan working group in the Senate has signaled it’s reached a deal on border security after months of negotiations, but a raging dispute within the Republican Party has thrown that effort into doubt as Senate Republicans weigh the political wisdom of that compromise.
Senate conservatives have for weeks expressed opposition to the border talks as Sens. James Lankford (R-OK), Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ), and Chris Murphy (D-CT) hammered out an agreement with the White House that would tighten asylum standards and give the president a new expulsion authority.
But the hard line driven by the Republican-led House, including from Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) himself, has further fractured the party in recent days. Former President Donald Trump‘s stated opposition has even injected the 2024 election into the conversation.
Negotiators told reporters this week that talks were ongoing regardless of Trump’s disapproval, but Senate Republicans have a difficult choice — take the deal despite House Republicans warning it is “dead on arrival” in the lower chamber or abandon the border negotiations and pursue aid for Ukraine, held up by the border talks, separately.
The conversation may be premature — the compromise has yet to be released — but Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has repeatedly voiced doubt about the current path forward being tenable.
“I think we’ve got to get the text so that we can have a meaningful discussion,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) said on Wednesday. “But, you know, it’s an uphill climb.”
“Members do deserve to read it,” Tillis, who has been briefed on the negotiations, added of the bill text. “I would ask those same members who are calling for time to read it to not judge something that they haven’t read.”
The bipartisan working group has been negotiating since the fall on the border deal, which would unlock Ukraine funding but also assistance for Israel and Taiwan. In fact, McConnell, Ukraine’s staunchest GOP ally since Russia’s invasion, has demanded “credible” border policy changes for the aid to move forward.
That put him at odds with some in his conference who wanted to pass portions of the supplemental, such as aid for Israel, separately.
McConnell acknowledged on Wednesday that the border talks had slowed, telling reporters: “Hopefully, we can work this border issue out in a way that is satisfactory, but there’s bipartisan support here in the Senate for both Israel and Ukraine.”
He even cracked the door to delinking the border from Ukraine.
“It certainly has been a challenge,” he added of the legislative effort. “I always thought it would be.”
If McConnell did push for the aid to be considered separately, he would still face opposition from parts of his conference. While more than half of the 49 GOP senators support some type of continued aid to Ukraine, there is a vocal minority that strongly opposes the funding.
But the most immediate problem for Senate leadership is how to overcome the opposition to the border compromise itself, which conservatives say would not actually solve the record levels of illegal crossings.
“The stories that are swirling about what this does and doesn’t do are wrong,” Sinema told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday. “It is misinformation, and whether it is willful or not is someone else’s question to answer, but the rumors that are swirling about what this legislation does are wrong.”
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“Our bill ends catch and release,” she continued. “It ensures that the government both has the power and must close down the border during times when our system is overwhelmed. And it creates new structures to ensure that folks who do not qualify for asylum cannot enter the country and stay here. It is a very robust package.”
Johnson has publicly insisted that the border provision in Biden’s defense supplemental be H.R. 2, House Republicans’ signature border bill. Lankford, however, insists that such a bill is not possible in a divided government.