Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) responded to Republican criticisms over the proposed border security bill released by Senate negotiators on Sunday night and said his colleagues should read the text of the bill rather than go off posts online.
Several Republicans, including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), have already expressed their opposition to the legislation. Lee said in a post on X on Sunday that he was opposed to the bill, but lawmakers need a few weeks to read the 370-page bill.
Lankford, one of the lead negotiators for the legislation, defended the bill on Fox News’s Fox and Friends on Monday.
“It’s interesting that he said he’s already opposed to it. He needs three weeks to be able to read it, but he’s already opposed to it. So again, people have got to be able to read it, go through it themselves. Don’t just go off a Facebook post somewhere on what the bill says,” Lankford said. “This dramatically changes asylum and dramatically changes deportations. We no longer have a 10-year backlog. It builds more wall. Those are the key things that it actually does, but read it for yourself. Don’t just believe what’s online.”
When asked about Johnson’s rejection of the bill, in which the House speaker cited Sen. Chris Murphy’s (D-CT) post claiming “the border never closes” under the legislation, Lankford argued the GOP had a chance to make some positive changes with the proposed bill.
“The key aspect of this again is, are we as Republicans going to have press conferences and complain the border’s bad and then intentionally leave it open after the worst month in American history in December? Now we’ve got to actually determine: Are we going to just complain about things, or we’re going to actually address in a change as many things as we can?” Lankford said.
He also claimed the deal would have been unimaginable for the GOP two months ago and challenged his Republican colleagues to do something about the border crisis.
“If we have this shot — it’s amazing to me. If I go back two months ago and say we had the shot under a Democrat president to dramatically increase detention beds, deportation flights locked down the border, to be able to change the asylum laws, to be able to accelerate the process, no one would have believed it,” Lankford said.
“And now, no one actually wants to be able to fix it and says I don’t want to even debate it. I don’t want to discuss it. We have to decide as Republicans what are we going to actually do about the border: Leave it open or actually leave it closed?” the GOP senator said.
Lankford advised Republicans that, considering the circumstances, the bill offers an opportunity to make positive changes.
“At the end of the day, let’s do everything we can. We do have a Democratic president. We have a Democrat Senate. We have a Republican House. This is a moment to solve as many things as we can and then keep working on the next thing,” the Oklahoma Republican said.
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The bill is expected to face a tough battle in the House of Representatives, with GOP leaders making their opposition clear. The Senate is expected to hold an initial vote on the bill on Wednesday.
The border bill also includes aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. Johnson has countered the border security bill with a separate Israel aid bill for the House of Representatives to consider this week.
