Johnson opposes the border deal as negotiators try to save it

Speaker Mike Johnson tried Friday to stifle the last glimmers of hope that a bipartisan immigration compromise would emerge from Congress this year, reiterating that any deal discussed in the Senate would almost certainly be “dead on arrival” in the Republican-led led government. House.

Mr. Johnson's statement, in a letter to Republican Party lawmakers in the House of Representatives, came after the top Republican in the Senate admitted this week that former President Donald J. Trump's opposition to the proposed border deal was politically had made it difficult for the party to embrace, effectively killing its chances. .

“If the rumors about the contents of the draft bill were true, it would have been dead on arrival in the House of Representatives anyway,” Mr Johnson wrote.

As the immigration plan falters, the fate of additional aid to Ukraine also hangs in the balance, with far-right Republicans in the House of Representatives also opposing it and threatening to impeach Mr Johnson if he tries to push it through over their objections to press.

In his letter, Mr. Johnson said the House would instead move forward next week with its push to oust Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the secretary of Homeland Security, and redoubled his demands that Congress embrace a bill against immigration that the House passed last year. or an equally severe measure.

“Since the day I took over, I have assured our Senate colleagues that the House would not accept any counterproposal if it did not effectively solve the problems created by this administration's subversive policies,” he wrote.

The letter reflects a position that Mr. Johnson and other far-right Republicans in the House of Representatives have maintained for months, repeatedly dismissing border enforcement measures under discussion in the Senate as insufficient. It came as Republican proponents of the deal worked hard in the Senate to build the necessary Republican Party support to advance the agreement. That task has become much more difficult as Mr. Trump, who has blasted the plan, has gained ground in his quest for the party's presidential nomination.

Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, told his fellow Republicans behind closed doors this week that Trump's hostility to the plan and his growing dominance in the primaries had left them “in a quandary.”

Mr. McConnell, one of the leading Republican proponents of sending more aid to Ukraine, has been a vocal supporter of the border deal that members of his party have pushed for as the price for their support for continued aid to Kiev.

The bipartisan team of senators that has worked for months to reach a compromise to address rampant migration and drug trafficking at the southern border with Mexico has agreed in recent days on a series of policy changes. They include measures to make it harder to obtain asylum, expand detention facilities and force the government to turn away migrants without visas if more than 5,000 people try to enter the country unlawfully on any given day.

The group has not yet agreed on how much money they will spend on the effort.

Many Republicans are angry that the deal does not include a specific restriction on parole, the government's authority to allow migrants who otherwise have no legal authority to enter the country to temporarily live and work in the United States. In his letter on Friday, Mr Johnson reiterated his demand for more restrictive changes, such as setting strict limits on parole and reviving the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” policy, which forced migrants could not be held in detention centers to wait outside. the United States until their legal dates.

And some Republican opponents of the border compromise have questioned the wisdom of considering it in the Senate if their counterparts in the House of Representatives are determined to block or kill it.

“If you're going to have a hard vote, you want it to actually accomplish something,” said Sen. J.D. Vance, Republican of Ohio. “If it is not passed by the House of Representatives, there is little point in forcing a vote on your membership, which will achieve nothing from a policy perspective, and which will cause a lot of problems politically. .”