Senate Democrats are deeply divided over an emerging border deal that some Democratic lawmakers fear will include harsh asylum policy reforms plucked from the House-passed Secure the Border Act in order to win GOP backing of long-delayed funding for Ukraine.
A growing number of Senate Democrats, including Latino caucus members, are sounding the alarm over leaks that say the administration is prepared to support new authority to expel migrants without asylum screenings and expand their detention and deportation.
They worry they’ll get blindsided next week if Senate negotiators reach a deal on border security and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) rushes it to the floor.
Schumer told colleagues Thursday that he plans to schedule a vote on an emergency foreign aid package that will include border security reforms next week. He said White House and Senate negotiators will work through the weekend to reach a framework agreement.
Democratic senators are concerned that Schumer plans to advance the legislative vehicle for the package before they even know the substance of the deal.
“If @SenScumer thinks he can send us home for the weekend, quietly cave to Republicans’ anti-immigrant demands while nobody is watching, and then ambush Democrats expecting us to vote yes with a smile, he is TERRIBLE MISTAKEN,” Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), a leading Democratic voice on immigration issues, posted on the social media platform X.
Menendez warned that “Schumer and those Democrats who are contemplating these proposals need to understand that these Trumpian policies will do nothing to address our challenges at the border and will only exacerbate the problem.”
Other Democrats are balking at reports that the White House is prepared to give significant ground to Republicans by agreeing to expanded executive power to expel migrants.
“I’m very concerned about the details,” Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) said. “I’ve got no details about where the negotiations are, but obviously I have concerns.”
Booker said “there’s a lot of things I’m concerned about,” noting “we don’t know who’s going to be president” and thus who will be enforcing new asylum and border security laws beyond the 2024 election.
Biden is expected to be the Democratic nominee for president, while the GOP front-runner is former President Trump, who issued tough measures at the border decried by Democrats when he was in office.
Booker said he’s worried Trump or a similar Republican president could “abuse power, violate our collective values, undermine the security and rights of all of our populations and not actually solve the problem” of having a secure border.
“Obviously, things that were in H.R. 2 do not make us safer but do violate the values” the United States adopted after World War II to address the injustice of Jewish refugees from Germany being turned away from American ports, Booker said, referring to the House’s Secure the Border Act.
Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) said “I’m always concerned when there’s serious conversations taking place with the lack of detail being shared.”
“What’s going on right now resembles that,” he said.
“How it’s being reported in the press suggests that there are many policies that have directly been taken out of H.R. 2, which is [the] product of folks like Stephen Miller, working under the Trump administration, which were politically driven and punitive toward people as opposed to solving problems,” he said, referring to Trump’s senior advisor for policy.
Luján said he’s voiced his concerns with Democratic colleagues.
“I have been doing that on this issue,” he said.
Other Democrats hold a different view
Other Democratic senators say the huge surge of migrants across the border, which now numbers 10,000 per day on average, has become a major problem that the Biden administration needs to address.
“Our borders are a mess,” Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said during a Fox News interview. “We have to close our borders down. We’ve got to control the borders and we have to change basically the asylum definition about what it takes to get into our country.”
Manchin said people who are in “desperate need” should still be able to seek asylum in a “legal way, but not the way they’re coming illegally now.”
“I believe that you’re going to see some changes being made very quickly, and I think it’s more than appropriate to do it,” he said.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), another centrist Democrat, said he hears “huge concerns” about the situation at the border.
Asked if the Biden administration needs to come out with a strong proposal to strengthen border security, Warner said: “I think they’re moving strongly right now.”
Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), who represents a border state and survived a competitive reelection race last year, predicted that the Senate will pass a border deal by Thursday of next week.
“I think we need an agreement. We’ve got a crisis at the border. I’ve got 7,000 migrants a day in the Tucson sector, more in the Yuma sector coming across. The charities are running out of resources,” he warned. “It’s critical we get this done. It’s also critical for Ukraine.”
Kelly and his home-state colleague, Sen. Kyrsen Sinema (I-Ariz.), who is one of the negotiators working on a border security deal, last year criticized the Biden administration’s decision to end Title 42.
Kelly predicted in April 2022 that lifting the authority to expel migrants without asylum screenings could result in a deluge at the border.
“It’s unacceptable to end Title 42 without a plan and coordination in place to ensure a secure, orderly and human process at the border,” he warned at the time. “It’s clear that this administration’s lack of a plan to deal with this crisis will further strain our border communities.”
Some Democratic senators were encouraged when Biden acknowledged last week that “we need to fix the broken border system” and said he would be willing “to make significant compromises at the border.”
“[Biden] said the border is broken. Homeland Security Secretary [Alejandro] Mayorkas has said … our system of immigration is broken. The FBI director said last week that we’re flashing code red” at the border, said Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.).
He argued that Biden included $13.6 billion for border protection in his emergency supplemental spending request because “he thinks there’s a lot that needs to be fixed on the border.”
Luján, who’s raised concerns about the direction of the talks, responded to his colleagues’ calls for strong border security measures by emphasizing that all Democrats, including outspoken advocates for the immigrant community, agree that situation at the border needs to be addressed. But he says more senators should have a say over what is being agreed to behind closed doors.
“There’s not one Democratic colleague that I’ve spoken with that doesn’t want to do something. There’s a misnomer out there that there’s a group of folks in the Senate Democratic Caucus that don’t want to do anything. That is just not true. That needs to be understood by all, which might encourage more people being included in these important conversations,” he said.