How Senate Democrats shifted the border issue to Republicans
As senators gathered in the chamber in late October for a typical Monday night vote, Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican and minority leader of Kentucky, approached Senator Chuck Schumer, his Democratic counterpart, with troubling news: to be part of any package to provide endangered aid to to free Ukraine.
For Schumer, the majority leader in New York, the ultimatum brought back unpleasant memories of his participation in difficult 2013 immigration negotiations that produced a compromise but then collapsed despite strong bipartisan support in the Senate. But saying no could wipe out aid to Ukraine and keep Democrats in check. He and his staff grappled with the problem for a week, then met for a conference call on Sunday, November 5. A daring new approach took hold.
“We had an epiphany — a kind of lightning strike,” Mr. Schumer recalled in an interview. “Put a boundary. If we've done it right and been strict about it, it's a win for us. And it helps us with Ukraine, because so many of our people care about Ukraine that they will vote for a good border law.”
The abrupt change in conventional Democratic thinking had profound significance for the next four months on Capitol Hill. It set off a circuitous chain of events — including some near-death experiences — that paved the way for Senate approval early Tuesday of $95 billion in aid to Ukraine, Israel and U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific. The final package notably did not include any new border security provisions, after Senate conservatives opted to drop that part of the legislation despite their initial push for its inclusion.
The undermining of the immigration proposal, which was hammered out during weeks of talks between Mr. Schumer's representatives and Mr. McConnell, ultimately paved the way for passage of the foreign aid bill. Enough Republicans — eventually 22 — were unwilling to abandon Ukraine, and many of them believed that Schumer and his fellow Democrats had made a good-faith effort to broker a border security deal that members of their own party was sabotaged.
The possibility that Republicans might back out of their own deal had crossed Mr. Schumer's mind from the start, given his past experiences.
“We already knew that then,” he says.
But Mr. Schumer saw a political advantage if that happened: Democrats could say they were trying and blame Republican opposition for failing to stop a wave of migrants illegally crossing the U.S. border with Mexico.
“It's a victory if Republicans abandon us at the last minute,” Mr. Schumer said in an interview, explaining his calculation, “because if Democrats could craft a tough, bipartisan bill on the border, wouldn't this remove the border as a problem. for Republicans, but it would give us a 50-50 chance of fighting it.”
The strategy appeared to pay off almost immediately with the victory of Tom Suozzi, a Democrat, on Tuesday in New York's special House elections. He was able to deflect his Republican opponent's attacks on immigration by accusing her and her party of playing politics with the border by rejecting the Senate deal.
“Unfortunately, too many Republicans have succumbed to the ministries of Donald Trump,” Schumer said after the Senate vote.
The senator acknowledged that border talks have been volatile. He regularly urged Senator Christopher S. Murphy, the Connecticut Democrat who is handling the talks for his party, to stick with it and be prepared to make a significant contribution, he said. Mr. Schumer suggested Biden administration officials directly involve Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the Homeland Security secretary, in the Senate discussions, which they did.
As Thanksgiving came and went, Mr. Schumer said he also sought greater involvement through his staff from President Biden, top White House officials and Mr. McConnell to expand buy-in.
He named a handful of Senate Democrats with credibility as strong supporters of Ukraine and good relations with Republicans to convince Republicans that Democrats were sincere about taking tough steps to stop the border surge. And he reached out to progressive and Hispanic activists — who were outraged by the idea that Mr. Biden and Democrats would agree to tough border restrictions — to address their fears and anger.
Despite all efforts, no deal was ready before the Senate broke out before Christmas, forcing Mr. Schumer and negotiators to work through the holidays. He even called on Christmas Day, he said.
A promising moment came when Congress returned last month, Mr. Schumer said. Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, the Republicans' lead negotiator in the talks, began releasing details of the possible deal to top colleagues, who seemed impressed by how far Democrats had advanced on the issue. Approval seemed possible, but in the weeks that followed, Trump began preemptively trashing the nascent deal and urging Republicans to reject it.
The deal quickly collapsed on February 4, within hours of the details being made public. Far-right conservatives in the Senate rioted, scoffing at the idea that Democrats had made any real concessions and saying Mr. Biden would not enforce the new law anyway.
When Senate Republicans, including Mr. McConnell, saw the handwriting on the wall, they fled the deal. Only four Republicans ultimately voted to bring the proposal to the table. Republicans still plan to hammer Democrats on border security issues, blaming the lack of strong border policies in the Ukraine aid bill as a reason for not taking up the legislation in the House of Representatives.
“The Senate foreign aid bill is silent on the most pressing issue facing our country,” Speaker Mike Johnson said, attacking the legislation and suggesting it was dead in the House of Representatives.
Still, members of both parties have credited Mr. Schumer with deftly playing a hand that insulated Democrats from a response to the collapse, provided a political defense of border policies and still allowed him and a bipartisan coalition of senators to deliver the aid to save Ukraine.
“He saw an opening and seized it,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut. “His approach has kept this effort bipartisan, despite the resentment and resistance.”
It also allowed Democrats to gain maximum political advantage from the immigration debate without having to make any policy concessions. They were able to signal to voters that they embraced strict border regulations — and blame Republicans for killing them — without having to implement the restrictions, which would certainly have alienated their progressive base.
But Mr. Schumer insisted he never supported the demise of the immigration package.
“It was a win-win situation either way,” he said, “but I would have preferred to see actual legislation because the border will still be there.”