Senate Border Deal in Peril Amid Mounting GOP Resistance

The U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 10, 2024. Samuel Corum/Getty Images

Less than 24 hours after the unveiling of the Senate border-Ukraine package, the deal appears to be on life support amid growing opposition from both Senate and House Republicans.

The details of the package, itself the culmination of months of behind-the-scenes wrangling between Senate Republicans and Democrats, were finally made public the evening of Feb. 4.

These revealed that the package had a top-line cost of $118 billion, including roughly $60 billion for Ukraine. Other expenditures in the package would go toward Israel, Taiwan, and U.S. border security.

The package seemed poised to be fast-tracked through the U.S. Senate with the support of both Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).

But the border security measures, including a provision that mandates a border shutdown when 5,000 illegal immigrants enter in a day, have drawn fierce blowback from conservatives. Senate Republicans have also called for more time to study the bill.

During a closed-door Senate GOP meeting on Monday night, Mr. McConnell recommended senators vote no to a procedural vote on Wednesday to advance the bill, according to a Senate source.

It would take only 41 senators to defeat the procedural vote on Wednesday. According to a whip list compiled by The Hill, at least 19 Republicans have publicly opposed the deal and two Democratic senators.

“I think the proposal is dead,” Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) told reporters after leaving the GOP meeting.

Even Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), the top Republican negotiator for the deal, suggested he might vote no in the procedural vote if his colleagues weren’t ready. Voting against its advancement on Wednesday, he told reporters, is “not voting against the bill, that’s voting on, ‘Is right now the time to be able to open this up for debate.”

“So that’s not the final passage. That’s the beginning point,” Mr. Lankford added.

For months, Mr. Lankford, Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) have worked behind closed doors to put the package together.

The details of the proposal, unveiled on Sunday, left many Republicans fuming.

Aside from $60 billion for Ukraine, the package includes $14.1 billion for Israel, $10 billion in humanitarian assistance for the Gaza Strip and Ukraine, $20 billion for border security, and $5 billion for Indo-Pacific partners.

To address the ongoing crisis at the border, the legislation would also institute a series of new border policies.

It would impose a higher legal standard for processing asylum claims, expedite the processing of these claims to six months, impose automatic mandatory shutdowns if illegal entries hit a daily average of 5,000 over a given week, and limit presidential parole authority.

House Republicans were quick to dismiss the legislation, with House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) calling it “an absolute non-starter” that she said would “further incentivize thousands of illegals to pour in across our borders daily.”

Others in the House, including erstwhile moderate Republicans like Reps. Mike Garcia (R-Calif.) and Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) also told The Epoch Times that they opposed the package.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has repeatedly indicated he wouldn’t even bring it to the floor for a vote.

And looming over all the negotiations is the presence of former President Donald Trump, who called the Senate package “a bad deal” and encouraged Republicans to oppose it.

Mr. Lankford on Sunday expressed surprise with Speaker Johnson’s reaction that the text of the deal was “worse than expected.”

“I’m a little confused by how it’s worse than expected when it builds border wall, expands deportations, expands ICE officers, Border Patrol officers, detention beds, how it creates a faster process for deportation, how it clears up a lot of the long-term issue loopholes that have existed in the asylum law and then gets us an emergency authority that stops the chaos right now on border,” Mr. Lankford told reporters in a conference call.

“So I’m a little confused; I‘ll have to get with the speaker’s team on that and find out what part would be ’worse than what we expected' based on the actual text, and hopefully, they will all have had an opportunity to read through the text.”

Mr. Lankford said he is open to amendments being considered from the floor of both the Senate and House, as well as additional negotiations.

“Yes, multiple of our members have talked about amendments, which I would welcome in the Senate, and I would welcome them in the House as well since that is the nature of trying to make legislation, to get as many to look at it and determine this is what we have and how can we make this better,” he said.

“I have no pride of ownership here. If we’re able to improve the bill as we work our way through the process, let’s do that.”

Mark Tapscott contributed to this report. 

A previous version of this article incorrectly stated Mr. McConnell had withdrawn his support for the deal. Mr. McConnell allowed Senate Republicans to vote no in an upcoming procedural vote. The Epoch Times regrets the error.