EAGLE PASS — House Speaker Mike Johnson led about 60 Republican lawmakers to the border with Mexico on Wednesday to demand stricter immigration policies in exchange for backing the president’s request for emergency funding for Ukraine. Joe Biden. The trip to Eagle Pass, Texas, comes as Senate negotiators continue to work in hopes of reaching a bipartisan deal.
With the number of illegal crossings into the United States surpassing 10,000 since August, the border city has been at the center of Republican Governor Greg Abbott’s Operation Lone Star, his nearly $10 billion initiative that has tested the federal government’s authority over immigration and elevated the political fight over the issue.
An agreement in the protracted talks in Washington would unlock GOP support for Biden’s $110 billion package for Ukraine, Israel and other U.S. security priorities. In the meetings, Senators Kyrsten Sinema, James Lankford and Chris Murphy are trying to make progress before Congress returns to Washington next week.
Transformative changes
It is not known whether Johnson, who has called for “transformative” changes to border and immigration policies, would accept a bipartisan Senate deal. Johnson has referred to a House bill, passed in May without a single Democratic vote, that would expand the border wall and impose new restrictions on asylum seekers.
Democrats said the law was “cruel” and “anti-immigrant,” and Biden promised to veto it, while thousands continue to enter through the border, causing a crisis in the country and enormous costs to taxpayers.
However, the president has shown himself willing to make political concessions, as the historic number of migrants crossing the border is a growing challenge for his 2024 re-election campaign. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and staff of the White House have participated in the negotiations in the Senate.
“They should give me money to protect the border”
“We have to do something,” Biden told reporters Tuesday night. He noted that Congress should approve his national security proposal because it also includes money to manage the influx of immigrants. “They should give me the money I need to protect the border,” he added.
Democratic administration officials have called Johnson’s trip a political ploy that will do little to solve the problem.
“When they are at the border, they are going to see the magnitude of the problem and why we have said now for about three decades, that their broken immigration system desperately needs legislative reform,” Mayorkas told CNN on Wednesday. “So we are focused on solutions, and we hope that they will come back to Washington and focus on solutions as well.”
Mayorka faces the threat of an “impeachment” due to the immigration chaos that has spread to large cities in the United States and the suburbs refuse to receive migrants.
Source: With information from AP
