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The border security negotiations on Capitol Hill keep running into a critical problem: Republicans don’t trust the Biden administration to follow through with any tough measures.
Lawmakers returned to Washington this week after a lengthy holiday vacation with little progress on border negotiations, the linchpin of broader talks about President Biden’s request for an emergency $110 billion national security spending bill. That proposal includes military aid for Ukraine and Israel.
Senators claimed optimism. Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, insisted a deal has never been closer.
Significant hurdles include how much the deal would tie Mr. Biden’s hands as he struggles to handle the most chaotic border in modern U.S. history.
“Negotiators are going to keep working till we get this done,” Mr. Schumer said.
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Negotiators are running into a problem of trust among Republicans, who watched the administration dismantle Trump administration border policies that were working and now doubt the Biden team’s commitment to fixing the situation.
“There’s a high level of skepticism on our part, since they don’t enforce the current laws, that they would enforce any new laws that we pass,” Senate Minority Whip John Thune, South Dakota Republican, told The Washington Times. “That’s why a lot of the discussion in this legislation is around triggers that will require certain types of action to be taken.”
Lawmakers involved in the talks say they have the outlines of a plan to make it tougher to assert questionable asylum claims at the border. Many illegal immigrants use bogus claims to delay deportation for years while they burrow more deeply into American communities, making their ouster unlikely even when they eventually lose their cases.
The big sticking point in a final deal is over what is known as “parole,” a special power given to the homeland security secretary to admit people for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefits. Those cases have traditionally been instances where someone needed a medical procedure or authorities wanted someone to help with an investigation.
Under Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, however, parole has become a backdoor immigration system, creating a pathway for masses of people to get into the U.S. outside the usual legal channels.
Mr. Mayorkas says he is using parole to siphon people from key countries to official ports of entry — airports and land border crossings — so they no longer have to try sneaking into the U.S. He says that takes pressure off the Border Patrol while allowing people who may have legitimate asylum claims to enter.
The approval rate for parole programs is more than 90%, and there is little sense that the Homeland Security Department is tracking and ousting those who violate the conditions of their parole. Although it has tamped down on the flow of some nationalities, it has done nothing to reduce the overall number of sneak-ins that Mr. Mayorkas said he was trying to solve.
In May, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the Biden administration was averaging about 80,000 parole grants each month, or a total of 1.5 million people from October 2021 through April 2023.
CBO predicted that the administration would continue to grant parole to “large numbers of people.” It projected an additional 4.5 million parolees under Mr. Biden’s policies over the next decade.
Sen. Mike Rounds, South Dakota Republican, said Republicans are determined to reel in that practice.
“It’s the same as catch and release, the way this administration has been using it, if you tell people that they can come in anytime, that once they’ve got a foot in the door, they are eligible to go anyplace the United States with a promise to appear in seven to 10 years,” he said.
Sen. Christopher Murphy of Connecticut, the Democrats’ lead negotiator on the border talks, said they won’t accept reeling in parole powers or anything else that limits Mr. Biden’s discretion.
“We are interested as Democrats in providing the administration with tools that will help better manage the border. We are not interested in taking away from the administration tools they use today to help better manage the border,” he said. “When we talk about this topic of parole, it is very important to understand that it is used today as a way the administration is able to better manage the flow in a planned-for way.”
Republicans have suggested one way to bind Mr. Biden is to include triggers in the final deal for specific enforcement tools based on the flow of migrants into the country and the number of removals of migrants from the U.S.
Details were minimal, but Republican senators said they need this statutory obligation to force the administration to implement a deal.
Sen. Kevin Cramer, North Dakota Republican, said compelling Mr. Biden to enforce any laws with an enforcement mechanism is “asking for a lot.”
“There’s just such a distrust with the administration’s enforcement of any of these laws. I don’t know how we get over that,” Mr. Cramer said. “All or nothing is a great negotiating position to start with and a lousy one to end with.”
Whatever the Democratic-led Senate decides must also clear the House, where Republicans hold the majority. Leaders say Mr. Biden could act on his own to solve the border right now.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, Louisiana Republican, released a list Tuesday detailing 64 actions Mr. Biden has taken that have “broken” the border, including profligate use of parole, suing to stop Texas’ efforts to rein in the chaos and erasing the Trump administration’s get-touch approach that in 2020 had created the most secure border in decades.
“The president must use his executive authority to repair what he has broken. I am calling on him to do so,” Mr. Johnson said.
He was responding to White House accusations that Republicans were thwarting border negotiations.
The finger-pointing underscores the tiny needle’s eye that any border deal must thread.
Democrats also face intense pressure from their left flank, where immigrant rights advocates have warned of political payback should Mr. Biden agree to anything that curbs migrants’ ability to make asylum claims.
“It is exceedingly cruel for policymakers to use vulnerable communities as bargaining chips for political gains,” said Nicole Melaku, executive director of the National Partnership for New Americans. “We hope that our immigration champions in Congress will not be baited in these negotiations to gut asylum and target immigrant communities.”
Sen. Ben Ray Lujan, New Mexico Democrat, deflected questions about parole, saying he would wait to see what the negotiators decide. He said the answer to the immigration situation is a broad bill that includes legalizing illegal immigrants.
“We know that there is a broken immigration system in America. And I have been part of a group of members that have advocated for a comprehensive immigration reform package that I’ve been proud to vote on and co-sponsor since the time that I served in the House of Representatives,” he said.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
• Ramsey Touchberry can be reached at rtouchberry@washingtontimes.com.
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