Senate’s border bill faces unexpected problem: Democrats

President Biden and Senate Democrats are facing an unlikely source of resistance as they race to secure a hard-fought deal linking Ukraine aid with tougher border security: their Democratic allies in the House.

Until now, it appeared that the greatest threat to the emerging national security package would be House Republicans, who are vowing to quash the legislation in no uncertain terms. 

But if conservatives are lining up against the legislation for being too soft on would-be migrants, liberal Democrats are bashing it for being too hard on the same group.

The Democratic critics — many of them representing the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC), the Progressive Caucus, or both — are up in arms that they’ve been cut out of the Senate negotiations and furious that the emerging legislation appears to exclude key Democratic priorities. That list includes protections for asylum-seekers and a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants already in the country, particularly a group of young people known as Dreamers.

A large and growing chorus of these Democrats are already warning that they’ll oppose the legislation if it does somehow reach the House floor, creating a potential messaging headache for Biden and other Democratic leaders who are casting advance blame on Republicans for blocking Congress’s best shot in years at a bipartisan border bill.

“Everything that I’ve heard that’s in this bill is going to set immigration reform — real comprehensive immigration reform — back 10 or 15 years,” said Rep. Nanette Barragán (D-Calif.), the head of the Hispanic Caucus. 

“If there was something in there like pathways [to citizenship] or Dreamers, that would be a very different conversation,” she continued. “But there was no negotiation. It was really a hostage-taking, and saying, ‘OK, what more do you want?’ And it was mostly concessions on things that there’s evidence is not going to fix the problem.”

The Democratic critics are quick to emphasize that no Senate deal has been finalized, and no formal legislative text has been released. But based on numerous media reports outlining some of the border changes purportedly locked into the bill, many House liberals say they’d oppose the package if those details ring true. 

“The things that are in the bill that were negotiated are things that are Trumpian kind of policies that have never worked to actually address the issues that we have,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. 

“So I’m disappointed, frankly, that the president, the White House and some other Democrats are giving in to that kind of narrative, because it undermines what we really do need to do that would fix the problem.”

The policy specifics are not the only source of contention. Liberals are also protesting the exclusion of Hispanic Caucus members at the negotiating table.

“It’s been a major problem, and I also think it’s going to pose a major obstacle to having the Hispanic Caucus approve any deal that’s coming out,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said. “The problem is with the policy [and] the problem is with the process, in not having any CHC members deeply involved in this.”

The criticisms are hardly universal. Some more moderate Democrats are quick to point out that, in a Washington of divided power, no party will get everything it wants, and that Democrats should be ready to accept some border compromises — especially with Ukraine funding on the line.

“From what I’m hearing, the Democratic senators moved substantially. But I hear the Republicans moved substantially also,” said Rep. Gregory Meeks (N.Y.), the senior Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee. “And to me, that’s the way this place works, where nobody gets all of what he or she wants.”

Still, the liberals see the Senate negotiations leaning too heavily in the favor of Republican priorities. Aside from the absence of citizenship pathways, the liberal critics are also blasting the bill for going too far to prevent would-be migrants from pursuing asylum and other legal avenues of entry into the U.S. 

Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), a former Progressive Caucus chair who represents almost all of the Arizona-Mexico border, said the solutions being proposed in the Senate bill “are more punitive than anything else.”

“Right now my instincts are not to support it,” he said. “I’ve never supported what I hear is in there.” 

The pushback comes as a bipartisan group of Senate negotiators say they’re inching closer to a deal combining tougher border measures with military aid for Ukraine and Israel, humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in Gaza and help for Taiwan. The border piece has been the toughest lift, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Wednesday that, while negotiators are getting closer to a deal, there remain “a few issues to be resolved.” 

“The work is not easy, it’s very hard, but we keep making progress,” he said during a press briefing in the Capitol. 

The emerging deal has been panned by conservatives in both chambers, and their opposition has been fueled by former President Trump, the front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination who is urging Republicans to oppose any border deal before he returns to the White House. 

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is on board with Trump’s call, saying the Senate bill, if the reported details are accurate, is “dead on arrival” in the lower chamber. And he’s getting plenty of support from conservatives, who say Biden has the power to end the border crisis on his own through executive actions, making congressional action unnecessary. 

“The president has the ability right now — the power — to stop it,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said this week. “But he chooses not to because this is all a sham and it’s purposeful. It’s a purposeful effort to dilute our society, and to undermine our way of life — to destroy Western civilization.”

The Republicans’ fervent opposition to the emerging Senate deal has triggered allegations from Democratic leaders that their GOP counterparts — who had insisted on marrying Ukraine aid and border security at the outset of the talks — never intended to support such a package because it might help Biden as he seeks reelection. When Trump came out against the package, that strategy was sealed, Democrats say.

“That is something that the Republican conference is going to have to wrestle with: that they are allowing the pro-Putin part of their majority to tie these issues together and then block any movement forward,” Rep. Katherine Clark (Mass.), the House Democratic whip, told reporters Wednesday in the Capitol, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Amid the debate, some Democrats have floated the idea that the House could overcome Johnson’s opposition to a Senate package by employing a discharge petition, which allows a simple House majority to force bills to the floor even over the objection of the majority party’s leaders. 

The liberal opposition to the border provisions, however, means that a number of Democrats would almost certainly refuse to sign the petition. Some said its prospects are as likely as Johnson bringing the bill to the floor voluntarily. 

“Whatever bipartisan deal comes out of the Senate — which would probably not have satisfied most of us Democrats — we won’t get to see that day anyway,” Grijalva said. “It would have been a tough vote here because there are a significant number of Democrats that feel that it’s just a punitive act.”

–Updated at 7:58 a.m.