As the GOP destroys the border deal, one of its own parties stands in the wreckage

It was late on a Thursday afternoon in the marble halls of the Senate, and a small group of negotiators—one Republican, one Democrat, and one Independent—had just finalized a meticulously crafted border security compromise that had taken them months to finalize. forging.

But what should have been a triumphant moment felt more like an ordeal for the lone Republican in the trio.

“I feel like the guy who stands in the middle of the field during a thunderstorm and holds up the metal stick,” Sen. James Lankford, the Oklahoma Republican and his party's chief broker of the deal, told reporters last week.

The fate of Mr. Lankford, a slim, understated Baptist minister with a neatly combed mop of red hair and a baritone voice who regularly delivers deadpan jokes, reflects the extraordinary rise and fall of the border and Ukraine deal, which is expected to collapse in one fell swoop. to collapse. test vote in the Senate on Wednesday — and the political forces within the Republican Party that overturned it.

For months, Mr. Lankford, a staunch conservative, worked on the package with Senators Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, and Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona independent, who demanded a strict immigration policy that his party insisted must be part of any bill that would be introduced. a new injection of aid to Ukraine. But when Mr. Lankford managed to get them out, he found his fellow Republicans unwilling to embrace the plan, a vivid illustration of how the political ground for any compromise on immigration has disappeared for a party that has decided that the issue is too valuable as a political weapon to resolve.

Mr. Lankford, who previously headed the nation's largest Christian youth camp and has often spoken about how his faith guides his policy positions, must pick up the pieces, a process he drily compared Tuesday to being run over by a bus – and then over him again.

The mild-mannered second-term Republican, who typically stays out of the political spotlight, did not volunteer to lead the border negotiations when they began in the fall. Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and minority leader, placed him as the top Republican on the Senate border security subcommittee. Or as Mr Lankford put it, he “drew the short straw when it came time to negotiate all this.”

His Republican colleagues warned him to be careful.

“I told him weeks ago that he would be like the goalie on a dart team,” said Sen. John Cornyn, the Republican of Texas, who supported the talks but spoke out against the bill this week. “He knew this was a treacherous path, but I have nothing but praise for Senator Lankford. I think he did the best job you can do under the circumstances. It's just a very, very, very difficult, complex situation.”

Just as Mr. Lankford and his fellow negotiators were nearing a deal, former President Donald J. Trump intervened, trashing the bill both before and after it was released Sunday and opening the floodgates of Republican resistance. That left Mr. Lankford fighting to keep the deal alive while under attack from members of his own party, including in his home state, where the Republican Party tried to censor him at the end of last month “Playing fast and loose with the Democrats on our border policy.” (The resolution was later withdrawn.)

Mr. Lankford said he was just the latest in a long line of lawmakers burned by failed efforts to push through a bipartisan immigration deal.

“This only happens once every 10 years – to try to work on border security – because it's so controversial and it takes people 10 years to forget what happened to those individuals,” he said Monday, “and again can take the risk.”

The bill he helped write would impose the major border restrictions that Congress has considered in recent decades, including measures to raise the bar for asylum applications, expand detention capacity, and close the border if more than an average of 5,000 migrants per day attempt to cross in a week, or more than 8,500 attempt to cross on any given day. It reflects a paradigm shift in the way Congress views modern immigration and border policies, with no mention of paths to legalization for undocumented immigrants currently in the country, which previously had been part of every immigration policy Democrats might discuss. negotiate.

Still, Republicans have rejected the plan, with the far right calling it too weak and more mainstream members, including Mr. McConnell, saying they are merely bowing to the political reality that it has no path through Congress.

The irony is not lost on Mr. Lankford.

Republicans “basically locked arms and said, 'We're not going to give you any money for this. We want a change in the law,” Mr. Lankford said on Fox News Sunday late last month. “Now it's interesting: a few months later – when we finally get to the end – they say, 'Oh, I'm just kidding. I actually don't want a change in the law because it's a presidential election year.”

Both Democrats and Republicans view Mr. Lankford as serious, policy-oriented, trustworthy and deeply conservative.

“I decided to do this because James was going to be my partner,” said Mr. Murphy, who spent countless hours in a room in the Capitol with Mr. Lankford poring over the details of the package. “He comes into politics because he wants to bring about change, not because he likes the roughness of political life. On some level, he's a bit of a throwback. That's likely to cause him some trouble when you get into the mix of one of the toughest and most controversial issues in American politics.”

Mr. Lankford is “a highly respected and conservative member of our conference who is willing to do the hard thing,” said Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 Republican.

His attention to detail was one of the reasons it took so long to get a deal done, Mr. Murphy said.

“James wanted to know every part of this bill inside and out so he could ultimately defend it,” he said. “It's clear that Trump has made his life difficult.”

On Monday, Chairman Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, said declared the bill 'even worse than we expected,' Mr Trump cited Mr Lankford for contempt, says conservative commentator Dan Bongino on his show that the deal was a “very bad reckoning” for Mr. Lankford’s career — “and especially in Oklahoma.”

Mr. Lankford, who won re-election in 2022 with 64 percent of the vote, won't face voters again until 2028, and it was not clear whether his involvement in the deal would hurt him in a state where he has a reservoir has. of good will.

Mr. Lankford “had honorable intentions, but he took on a huge task,” Chad Alexander, the former chairman of the Republican Party of Oklahoma, said in an interview. “The sentiment has become even more intense since he started this four months ago. And now it's a powder keg.”

In some ways, Mr. Lankford's involvement in this effort is reminiscent of a very different political moment decades ago, when evangelical Christians were influential voices on the right in favor of humane immigration policies, including welcoming refugees and a path to citizenship for people without papers.

“He is absolutely guided by his faith and the value he places on every life,” Pat McFerron, an Oklahoma pollster and political consultant, said in a text message. “Every person is made in God's image. The passion he has here is no different than his passion for helping the unborn.”

Mr. Lankford has previously been swept up in the crosscurrents of Republican politics. Following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob, Mr. Lankford apologized to Black voters in Oklahoma for supporting Mr. Trump's attempt to overturn the election in Congress, in which he said he had not realized that his position would be seen as an attack on their right to vote.

He has also dealt with other tough political issues before. He worked closely with Senator Tim Scott, the only Black senator in the Republican Party, on Republican legislation to address systemic racism in law enforcement. tried to bridge racial divisions and attitudes toward race within the Republican Party during 2020's widespread racial justice protests.

None of it was more difficult than the border effort. On Monday, as the bill's chances looked increasingly bleak, he went on a media blitz, trying to explain a provision in the package that Republicans have falsely suggested would allow 5,000 undocumented immigrants to enter the country every day let in. He pointed out that Republicans have repeatedly said there is a crisis at the border and that Congress must pass new legislation — a message Democrats are already using against the Republican Party.

“Are we as Republicans going to hold press conferences and complain about the bad border, then deliberately leave it open after the worst month in American history in December?” Speaking on “Fox & Friends,” Mr. Lankford added that few thought Republicans could win such important policy concessions from Democrats.

“Nobody would have believed it,” Mr. Lankford said. “And now no one wants to be able to fix it.”

On Tuesday, even as his colleagues called the compromise dead, Mr. Lankford refused to give up.

“The Scripture references say you work as long as there is daylight, so I'm going to keep working until we know it has no chance of moving anymore because I really think the problem needs to be solved,” he said.

That wasn't the prevailing attitude among Republicans, especially among far-right lawmakers who cheered the collapse of his efforts.

In a lengthy thread, Mr. Lankford posted on social media in an attempt to defend the bill, said Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, responded bluntly: “Just take the L.”

Karoun Demirjian And Catie Edmondson reporting contributed.