An immigration bill that vulnerable Democrats have used as evidence of their commitment to border security has been killed by Republican senators, who say the bill would actually worsen the crisis on the southern border.
“That bill is terrible. It's self-destructive,” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told Fox News Digital on Thursday about the bill negotiated by Sens. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., and James Lankford, R-Okla.
“I don't know who Trump called,” he added, a sentiment echoed by another Republican senator.
After former President Donald Trump himself spoke out against the bill, Democrats blamed him for its ultimate death, and Trump welcomed the condemnation, but several Republican senators said the bill was essentially dead from the start, with or without Trump's input.
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Republicans say the bill, pushed primarily by Senate Democrats, would actually make the border crisis worse. (Reuters)
Republican senators were also asked by Fox News Digital in the spring about whether Trump was involved in lobbying against the border bill, and they denied that the former president had made any calls.
On Thursday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told Fox News Digital that the bill is terrible. “It was written by Chuck Schumer. He wrote it with the intent of keeping the current open border in perpetuity,” he argued.
Cruz listed his concerns about the bill, including that it codified “catch and release”: “This bill immediately issued work permits to illegal immigrants upon entering the United States. This bill provided taxpayer-funded lawyers to illegal immigrants. This bill provided billions of dollars to sanctuary cities and NGOs that help crack down on human traffickers, normalizing the immigration of 5,000 illegal immigrants a day.”
“It's not designed to solve any problems,” he said.
As the Texas senator noted, the bill would expand so-called alternatives to detention (ATD) for illegal immigrants, immediately issue work permits to people who pass initial asylum screening, provide funding for lawyers to represent unaccompanied minors, and establish a threshold of 5,000 border crossings per day on average for a week before implementing emergency powers for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to block illegal immigrants between ports of entry.
He also pointed to the fact that Murphy, the Democratic chief negotiator, wrote in the bill on X that “the border will never be closed, but claims must be processed at the ports.”
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Murphy did not respond to Republicans' points that the bill would make the border worse, saying it was false that the bill would not enact catch-and-release or actually close the border. “Those things are not true,” Murphy told Fox News Digital on Thursday.
The bill came up for an initial procedural vote in February as part of a supplemental spending deal that also included aid funds for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. The vote was 49-50, failing to garner the 60 votes needed to move forward. The supplemental foreign aid package ultimately passed without the border measures.
“There's a lot of good things in this bill, but at the end of the day it doesn't address the one thing that I think is a legitimate argument, which is trust in this administration to get it done,” Republican Sen. Thom Tillis told reporters Thursday.
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Cruz slammed the bill and its author, Democratic Senator Murphy. (Getty Images)
Senator Lankford, along with Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah and Susan Collins of Maine, were the only Republicans to vote in favor of the bill negotiated in February.
Senate Democrats put the bill up for another procedural vote in May, but it was defeated again by a wide margin. Two of the three negotiators, Sinema and Lankford, voted against it in the final 43-50 vote. Romney and Collins also voted against moving the bill forward on the second vote.
“I don't think that's everything, but I think it's helped,” Collins told Fox News Digital on Thursday.
Democrats running for the Senate have demonstrated their commitment to the border issue by slamming Republicans who have signaled their opposition to the negotiated bill and by touting their support for it during their own campaigns.
For example, Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat from Montana who is embroiled in one of the nation's most fierce presidential races, voiced his support for the bill in an April ad saying, “Jon Tester fought alongside Republicans to close the border, target fentanyl traffickers, and add hundreds of new Border Patrol agents.”
Democrats running for the Senate aren't the only ones using the bill to their advantage: Vice President Kamala Harris is campaigning to sign the bill into law if elected president in November.
As for whether Democrats' support for the bill will resonate with voters, Collins told Fox News Digital that it won't. “The president has issued executive orders, he's been pushing this bill for years and he's done absolutely nothing. It's the president who created this crisis,” Collins said of President Biden.
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Tillis said he doesn't believe Biden and Harris can implement the law. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Tillis noted that Biden and Harris “conveniently omit to mention that they are not enforcing existing law.”
“You had some people saying, 'I don't care about the policy. I just don't think it can be done,'” he said, characterizing Republican discussions of the negotiated bill.
Romney reiterated his disagreement with some of his caucus members over the measure, suggesting they were “trying their best to provide an excuse for their very unfortunate vote.”
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He said that “of course” Trump bears responsibility for the failure.
Lankford's office declined to comment to Fox News Digital.
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