Immigrant advocates are furious at Biden over Ukraine-border talks

Immigration advocates are livid over the White House’s role in Senate negotiations pairing Ukraine funding and border policy.

They blame the Biden administration for linking the two disparate issues in the first place, and grassroots groups are raising alarm that political gamesmanship will lead to years of pain for immigrants nationwide.

The administration’s original supplemental funding request, which covered foreign security aid, border and disaster funding, wasn’t well received among immigration advocates because it enhanced some controversial areas of enforcement.

Those border proposals have snowballed into a GOP wishlist that advocates say would essentially codify former President Trump’s border proposals.

“We are deeply concerned that the President would consider advancing Trump-era immigration policies that Democrats fought so hard against — and that he himself campaigned against — in exchange for aid to our allies that Republicans already support,” Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) Chair Rep. Nanette Díaz Barragán (D-Calif.) and Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) wrote in a joint statement.

“Caving to demands for these permanent policy changes as a ‘price to be paid’ for an unrelated one-time spending package would set a dangerous precedent.”

Immigrant advocates say the administration isn’t caving, but rather is intentionally seeking aggressive expansion of its border enforcement powers.

“It was the White House — officials at the White House — who proactively engaged and reached out to Republicans on the Hill to suggest that it would be perhaps not a bad idea to have their arm twisted on restricting asylum and making it harder. And that was the opening act that led us to this point,” said an advocate close to the negotiations, who asked for anonymity to speak candidly.

“It’s a total miscalculation of historic proportions,” the advocate said. “To somehow think that you can one-up Trump by legislating his agenda before he can like that’s a win is nonsensical.”

The White House has painted the talks as ordinary negotiations on a policy priority for the president.

“The president has been clear that the border is broken and that Congress must act — in fact, his first piece of legislation sent to Congress in 2021 was for updating and reforming our immigration policies. The president has said he is open to compromise as Senate negotiators continue to work toward a bipartisan package,” a White House spokesperson told The Hill.

White House officials say the administration’s direct contact with Senate negotiators has been limited to technical assistance, rather than on specific proposals. But as the deadline for Ukraine funding nears, the White House is taking a more active role.

“Last week, you heard the president make the case to Congress and the country on the urgent need to support Ukraine in its fight against Putin. He has repeatedly conveyed that message to congressional leaders personally,” White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates told reporters Monday aboard Air Force One.  

He said the White House Legislative Affairs Office, Office of Management and Budget and National Security Council “are in close touch with lawmakers from both parties … and we’ll continue to do that.”

But immigration advocates in Congress and beyond are not buying it, and they broadly see the White House as playing to lose, in hopes of getting expanded powers to crack down at the border.

“The president’s understanding of this issue is that deterrence works and that appeasing Republicans works. Neither of these is true,” said another advocate who asked for anonymity.

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), a leading voice on the issue whose influence has been dulled by a federal indictment on corruption allegations, said President Biden “is badly mistaken to think” Democrats will vote for a package with deterrence baked into it.

“It is alarming that the President is open to dramatically limiting access to asylum and significantly expanding expedited removal, even to the interior of our country,” Menendez said.

“These are half-baked, failed policy ideas put forward by Republicans that would do nothing to address the root causes of irregular migration to our southern border and would only inject further cruelty and chaos into an already broken system.”

The question of deterrence is at the center of the friction between administration officials and outside advocates.

Republicans are all-in on the idea that enforcing immigration law in a punitive manner and turning away a majority of people who present at the border will stop others in Latin America and beyond from making the trek to the United States.

That’s the rationale for demanding severe restrictions on who can claim asylum, curtailing the administration’s ability to provide parole to individuals or classes of immigrants, and expanding expedited removal to the interior of the country.

For the most part, Democrats disagree.

“Right now, as negotiations on a supplemental funding bill continue, it is critical to recognize that proposals to eliminate or severely reduce access to asylum and parole will not accomplish these goals,” Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) said in a statement Monday. 

“Instead, as recent history shows, drastic bans at the border have not served to reduce the number of people seeking refuge from violence in their countries.”

The growing opposition that has banded immigration advocates together with progressives and the Tri-Caucus — the CHC, the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus — is spilling over into other Democratic groups.

MoveOn, a progressive voter mobilization outfit, weighed in on the issue Monday, noting that Trump is running on many of the restrictions on the negotiation table.

“President Biden and Democrats in Congress have to create a clear contrast between Trump’s horrific legacy and the Democrats’ vision for meaningful immigration reform, including establishing a legal pathway to citizenship and welcoming asylum seekers,” MoveOn Executive Director Rahna Epting said.

The political fallout from massive immigration concessions could be a worst-case scenario for Biden ahead of 2024, at once dulling his credibility and discouraging immigration-conscious base voters, while conceding major points on a top issue to Trump, the leading GOP candidate.

Even immigration experts who consider deterrence part of the immigration enforcement toolkit are concerned that Republican demands on asylum could break the entire system.

Muzaffar Chishti, a Migration Policy Institute senior fellow, said success at the border should be judged on giving protection to those who deserve it through an efficient asylum process and preventing those who don’t deserve it from gaming the system.

“To me, those are the two principles, if anything helps advance those principles, that is good policy,” he said.

Chishti said asylum processing should happen at the border before migrants are allowed to  move on to the interior of the country, expeditiously turning away people without legitimate asylum claims.

Many immigration advocates say stricter asylum controls would not deter migrants, but instead push them to either attempt to enter the country surreptitiously or simply create a humanitarian nightmare bottleneck at the border.

“Not only will these policies fail to improve conditions at the border, but some will have the impact of increasing, not decreasing, unauthorized encounters, creating more chaos at the border in 2024,” Todd Schulte, executive director of immigration advocacy group FWD.us, wrote in a memo Friday.

And the proposal to expand expedited removal to the interior, which would allow immigration officials to detain and deport any foreign national that can’t quickly prove they’ve been in the country longer than two years, is unlikely to have an effect on the border.

“That works well for people who have sneaked in. But this is not the group of people who sneaked in. We have a totally different flow,” said Chishti, adding that “expedited removal to me does nothing to address that flow of people.”

Beyond the specific policies under consideration, many Democrats, immigration advocates and experts are questioning whether Republicans are looking to use immigration to sink aid to Ukraine.

“If I were a cynic, I’d say that Republicans have decided to tie support for Ukraine to immigration reform because they want Ukraine aid to fail. But I’m not a cynic,” Sen. Chris Murphy (Conn.), the lead Democrat in negotiations, said Sunday on “Meet the Press.”

And advocates say that point should be enough for Democrats to pull away from negotiations.

“If the starting point are these demands and on top of that, you’re gonna do it and accomplish them by hijacking Ukraine funding, then what does that say about your intentions, that you’re trying to sneak in a bunch of poison into what gets voted on?” said the advocate with knowledge of the talks.

“Because if the policies could stand by themselves, then you wouldn’t have the need to hijack Ukraine funding.”