The massive surge in illegal immigration at the southern border, which topped 144,000 apprehensions in May, has prompted bipartisan agreement in Congress that it’s time to pass an emergency spending bill to help deal with what everyone now acknowledges is a crisis. The Senate will attempt to advance an emergency supplemental spending bill next week, but first, both parties will have to strike a deal on what to include in the measure.
“We’ll have to have a supplemental because the needs are so great,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said. “But we’ll have to come to an agreement.”
It may not be easy. President Trump on May 1 sent Congress a $4.5 billion emergency funding request in response to the border crisis, but Democrats rejected it.
Now a bill “along the same lines,” according to Senate Majority Whip John Thune, R-S.D., is poised for a vote in the Senate Appropriations Committee on June 19. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., urged Democrats to support a deal this time around, pointing to “a genuine humanitarian crisis” on the border.
“I hope our Democratic friends here in the Senate will at long last follow our lead here and address this very, very significant crisis,” McConnell said.
Not so fast, said Democrats last week.
Trump’s request includes about $3.3 billion in humanitarian aid, much of it for the Health and Human Services Department to provide shelter for the thousands of migrants who have illegally crossed the border. The department could run out of funds for the migrants as soon as this month, Secretary Alex Azar warned.
Democrats don’t object to that funding. They balked at the rest of the package, which includes $342 million for additional detention beds in facilities used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to house illegal immigrants. Another $377 million would pay for “logistical support” from the Defense Department.
Pelosi, speaking to reporters at the end of last week, warned that the GOP must remove the money for the detention beds as well as the funding for the Defense Department, which would be used to deploy troops to the border. “We don’t want them to poison pill what we are trying to do to meet that humanitarian challenge,” she said.
Democrats have already won a battle over border funding once before, having kept the measure out of a $19.1 billion disaster aid package that Trump signed into law this month.
Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., who is chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said late last week that the new measure would “be mainly humanitarian,” which would exclude the Defense Department money.
Democrats will likely have to give up some ground in the negotiations, too.
The beds, for example, could end up in the bill, Shelby told the Washington Examiner. “That’s all part of the humanitarian crisis,” he said.
Democrats may also seek to include in the measure new requirements to ensure that border officials provide humane treatment to illegal immigrants. For example, the bill could require that illegal immigrants be housed in licensed facilities and have access to legal, recreational, and educational services.
Shelby frowned on those additions. “We would probably like to keep it clean,” he said last week. “If you load it up, it will go nowhere.”
Trump will have to agree to whatever deal is reached in Congress. Shelby has not discussed it with him yet, he said.
The first step will be an agreement in the Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday.
“We hope we can forge a bipartisan movement there,” he said.
