Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, the lead Republican negotiating with Democrats and the White House on bolstering security at the southern border, said Sunday that bill text could come as early as this week.
The Senate returns Monday from a three-week holiday recess, but a small bipartisan group of senators and administration officials talked through the break in a quest for an immigration deal to attach to a $110 billion national security aid package for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan.
“Text hopefully this week to be able to get that out. Everybody will have time to be able to read and go through it,” Mr. Lankford said on “Fox News Sunday.” “No one’s going to be jammed in this process. It’s a matter of trying to be able to get this out but [also] to make law.”
Negotiators have kept the talks under strict lock and key, including from their own colleagues, sparking pushback from the left and the right before details have been finalized. Among the policies discussed to stem the record flow of illegal southern border crossings are things like asylum, immigration parole and strengthening expulsion authority.
Mr. Lankford said the “catch-and-release” practice of apprehending migrants and then releasing them into the U.S. to await their adjudication process must end, which would mean “we’ve got to have more people to be able to process, but we’ve got to fix the process as well.”
A potential deal is far from done in the Senate, let alone the House, where some hardline conservatives are threatening to shut down the government unless Democrats and the White House consider their more stringent immigration bill passed last year known as H.R. 2.
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House Speaker Mike Johnson said Sunday in an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that holding a vote on the expected agreement is a “hypothetical question” but added that Republicans “of course want a deal.”
Mr. Lankford pitched bipartisanship as the only viable path for a divided government.
“We’re working to thread that needle,” he said.
• Ramsey Touchberry can be reached at rtouchberry@washingtontimes.com.
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