House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has issued a warning to Senators about a proposed border security bill that is rumored to be under negotiations in the upper chamber.
A bipartisan group of senators has been quietly negotiating a supposedly tough border security bill that would seemingly bring an end to the current crisis brought about by President Joe Biden’s undeniable policies of lax enforcement of existing security and immigration laws.
However, Johnson just informed the Senate that, if the rumored details of the proposed legislation were true, the measure would be “dead on arrival” once it arrived in the House, Politico reported.
Johnson’s warning rings especially loud given President Biden’s apparent endorsement of the Senate deal and his claim that its passage would grant him the authority to finally crack down on the border.
Yet, Biden has had this authority since his first day in office but he has steadfastly refused to utilize it.
In a letter sent Friday to the Senate, Johnson wrote:
“I wanted to provide a brief update regarding the supplemental and the border since the Senate appears unable to reach any agreement.
“If the rumors about the contents of the draft proposal are true, it would have been dead on arrival in the House anyway.”
Johnson noted that the House already passed a bill to substantially strengthen border security and reform immigration laws — a bill the Democrat-controlled Senate has refused to consider — and reminded the Senate that the House “would not accept any counterproposal” that wouldn’t “actually solve the problems that have been created by the administration’s subversive policies.”
The speaker went on to call out both President Biden and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Sec. Alejandro Mayorkas.
Mayorkas is on the verge of being impeached by the House for having “willfully ignored and actively undermined” the nation’s existing border security and immigration laws, and chastised the president for “now trying to blame Congress for what HE himself intentionally created.”
Johnson also raised the valid question of why pass new laws when the statutes already on the books were not being enforced and said that if Biden was “serious” and acting in “good faith” then he already had ample authority at his disposal to immediately address the border crisis.
“I am emphasizing again today that House Republicans will vigorously oppose any new policy proposal from the White House or Senate that would further incentivize illegal aliens to break our laws,” the speaker’s letter concluded.
Axios reported that some of the details were recently leaked from the border security measure currently being negotiated by Sens. James Lankford (R-OK), Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ), and Chris Murphy (D-CT).
And while some will portray the deal as tough and necessary, critics will point out that it doesn’t go nearly far enough to actually fix the ongoing problems at the border.
Supposedly, the bill would authorize DHS to completely shut down the border for up to two weeks if daily illegal crossing numbers reached an average of 5,000 per day for a week or 8,500 in a single day.
However, there would be exceptions for families and humanitarian purposes.
The measure would also reportedly impose lengthy bans on entry for migrants who repeatedly attempt to cross the closed border and would limit asylum claims to only legal ports of entry, as well as dramatically speed up the asylum adjudication process to just six months instead of several years, among other things.
Interestingly enough, President Biden issued a statement Friday to endorse the leaked plans still under negotiations and insisted that, if passed, he would immediately make use of the “new emergency authority to shut down the border when it becomes overwhelmed.”
Speaker Johnson is correct to assert that this proposed border deal if the leaked details are correct, is already “dead on arrival” in the House, as it appears to be little more than a Trojan Horse masquerading as tough border security measures.
In reality, it would do little more than codify into law the unrelenting flood of migrants into the country unleashed by President Biden’s non-enforcement policies for existing laws and authorities.
Indeed, if up to 5,000 illegal migrants could cross the border daily before triggering a temporary shutdown, that amounts to around 35,000 per week, 140,000 per month, and 1.8 million per year.
These numbers are far beyond unacceptable for Americans who want to see a truly secure border and an end to illegal immigration altogether.
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