The top Senate Republican negotiators on the bipartisan border security deal urged people to not believe reports about the agreement after House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) shot down the notion of agreeing to terms mentioned on a news broadcast.
Johnson shared a photo of a Fox News graphic on Saturday that included a bullet point list of terms that the Immigration Accountability Project alleged to be in the agreement, which negotiators have not yet released text for.
The organization claims that the deal would increase the number of available green cards by 50,000 annually, allow work permits for adult children of H-1B visa holders, grant immediate work permits to every illegal migrant released from custody into the U.S. interior, provide taxpayer-funded lawyers to unaccompanied alien children and mentally impaired migrants, allow 5,000 migrants per day into the U.S., and restrict parole for those who enter the country between ports of entry without authorization.
Johnson wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Saturday that the House would “absolutely not” pass legislation that includes such measures.
“I encourage people to read the border security bill before they judge the border security bill,” Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), the lead GOP negotiator, wrote on X on Sunday. “I also advise people not to believe everything you read on the internet.”
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), who is also involved in the talks, wrote on the platform shortly after that, “A lie has speed but the truth has endurance.”
“Folks should take a deep breath: negotiations are ongoing and ‘leaks’ about what is in the deal don’t reflect what is actually on the table,” Tillis said. “Republicans will only agree to a deal that stops abuse of our asylum system and stops the Biden Admin’s blatant abuse of parole, which it has used to mass release illegals. This is why the left is freaking out and is already opposed to any deal.”
Lankford, Tillis explained, “has forced President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas to come to the table and account for their failures at the border. Senator Lankford is leading a strong effort to force the Biden Administration to finally take steps to secure the border and stop the historically disastrous influx of illegal immigrants.”
A bipartisan working group of senators has spent over a month negotiating a border security deal, which would be added to a defense spending bill that includes aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. Negotiators on both sides have acknowledged that the border measure is critical to passing the legislation through both chambers.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who has been Ukraine’s staunchest GOP ally since Russia launched its war last February, has said he supports the larger supplemental package as long as it includes “credible” border policy changes.
Lankford and Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) have been leading the negotiations, which have centered largely on changes to federal asylum policy and how the Biden administration uses the humanitarian parole authority. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) has also been heavily involved in the talks.
There have also been reports that the White House has offered to establish a new border expulsion law and increase mandatory detention rates as part of the negotiations, though no one from the Senate working group or the Biden administration has confirmed as much publicly.
For his part, Johnson has publicly insisted that the border provision in Biden’s defense legislation be the Senate’s version of H.R. 2, House Republicans’ signature border bill.
Senate GOP negotiators, however, have pushed back on the notion that they are demanding Democrats agree to H.R. 2.
“We are not asking for all of H.R. 2, I know that’s [Democrats’] claim all the time,” Lankford told the Washington Examiner in an interview in early December.
“We understand the dynamics. The House passed something without Democrat support. We don’t have that privilege. We have to do everything in a bipartisan way in the Senate. That’s just the nature of the Senate, especially one that’s equally divided,” the Oklahoma senator continued.
“We’re aware we’re not in the House, we’re in the Senate. We’re keenly aware of that, but we also understand that this can’t be just something decorative.”
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Asked about this conflict earlier this month, Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) predicted that the GOP to remain united on policy and strategy in terms of the border issue, and said he felt assured that GOP leadership would block a supplemental that lacked adequate policy changes.
“The leverage points are different for everybody,” Cramer told the Washington Examiner. “You have some people who oppose Ukraine, period. Anything that includes that, they just make it more difficult to vote for, not easier. There are some people, probably more, that want to support Ukraine and certainly want to support Israel and will do that regardless. I don’t think there’s ever a time when we’ll have more leverage than we have right now to get border security issues.”
