Senators release border deal to free aid to Ukraine, but fate remains uncertain

Senate Republicans and Democrats on Sunday confirmed a compromise plan to crack down on illegal migration across the U.S. border with Mexico and cleared a crucial hurdle to an aid package for Ukraine, but the deal faces long odds in a deeply divided Congress on both issues.

The release of the agreement, which came after more than three months of near-daily conversations between senators and Biden administration officials, was seen as an unlikely breakthrough on a policy issue that has plagued presidents of both parties and prompted decades of attempts at compromise has braved on Capitol Hill. . President Biden implored Congress to approve it late last month, promising to immediately close the border once it became law.

But Speaker Mike Johnson has declared it “dead on arrival” in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. And because former President Donald J. Trump actively campaigned against the deal, it was not clear whether the measure could even make it out of the Democratic-led Senate, where it would need bipartisan support to move forward.

Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and majority leader, has said he plans to put the border and Ukraine package to an initial vote on Wednesday, a critical test of its ability to survive.

“I know the vast majority of senators want to get this done, and it will take bipartisan cooperation to move quickly,” Schumer said in a statement Sunday. “Senators must tune out the noise of those who want this deal to fail for their own political agenda.”

The plan includes some of the most significant border security restrictions that Congress has considered in recent years, including making it more difficult to seek asylum, vastly expanding detention capacity and effectively closing the border to new arrivals if more than an average of 5,000 migrants per day attempt to cross to cross over the course of a week, or more than 8,500 attempt to cross on any given day. Encounters would have to drop to 75 percent of those thresholds for a week before those processes could restart.

But it falls short of several Republican demands, including limiting parole and related programs that allow migrants to live and work legally in the United States without a visa while they wait for a hearing on their immigration claims — sometimes for years.

These omissions have alienated right-wing Republicans, who pushed for much stricter measures, while the restrictions have enraged progressive Democrats. That could complicate the plan's path through the closely divided Senate, where it needs bipartisan support — at least 60 votes — to advance. And the compromises threaten to destroy the deal altogether in the Republican Party-led House of Representatives, where there is strong opposition to providing additional aid to Ukraine and many right-wing Republicans see the immigration restrictions as insufficiently strict.

Mr. Trump has bitterly denounced the plan, calling it a “horrendous betrayal of open-border America” and vowing to “fight it to the fullest.” At a campaign event last month in Nevada, he urged Republicans to end the measure and “blame it on me.”

With the new border measures, the price tag of the new bill is expected to be $118.3 billion — about $13 billion more than Biden initially asked for. The measure includes $60.1 billion to help Ukraine in its war with Russia, $14.1 billion in security aid for Israel, $10 billion in humanitarian aid for civilians in conflict zones including Gaza, the West Bank and Ukraine, and 20 $.2 billion in border security improvements.

The bipartisan negotiations in the Senate were boosted by an ultimatum in the fall from Republicans, who threatened to withhold support for a bill to send Ukraine a new infusion of U.S. aid unless the money was accompanied by tough U.S. border enforcement measures States.

They followed through on the threat in December, blocking an emergency national security package requested by Mr. Biden that included tens of billions in aid to Ukraine, funding for Israel's war effort in Gaza, humanitarian aid to Palestinians and security measures to curb Chinese influence to counteract. in the Indo-Pacific region.

Mr. Biden included $13.6 billion for border security in his request, an indication that he and Democrats in Congress saw the situation at the border as a potential political burden in an election year. In the weeks that followed, their willingness to negotiate with Republicans on major policy changes to address unauthorized border crossings reflected a growing sense within the party of an unsustainable status quo, with a record influx of migrants arriving in the United States without visas and the resulting crowds at shelters across the country.

Right-wing Republicans have rushed to capitalize on public dissatisfaction with Biden's handling of the border, and many have argued that they should not support any immigration legislation that could allow the president or Democrats to take credit for addressing the issue.

They also took aim at some provisions of the compromise that would streamline the process for migrants seeking to enter the United States.

The bill would raise the bar for migrants who claim they have a “credible fear” of persecution if they return to their home countries, and would create a new voluntary repatriation program for the government to fly migrants home on commercial airlines. But it would also stipulate that migrants who can claim credible fear would be released to live and work in the country, and that immigration officials on the ground could grant asylum status to migrants who present particularly compelling cases. The bill also creates a review committee to hear any appeals against the decisions, with the aim of making final asylum decisions within six months.

It also includes a measure to provide a government-funded lawyer to unaccompanied children aged 13 or younger, and to give any migrant placed in expedited removal proceedings 72 hours to find a lawyer who can contest the deportation.

The bill would create 50,000 new green card-eligible visas per year for five years, with 32,000 for families and 18,000 for work-related visas. Additionally, it ensures that the children of H-1B visa holders do not lose their right to a green card once they become adults, and creates a new temporary visa category to allow non-citizens to visit U.S.-based family.

The bill also includes a version of the Afghan Adjustment Act, which would create a path to citizenship for Afghans who fled to the United States after the Taliban took power.

Mr. Johnson and other Republicans in the House of Representatives have repeatedly said they will accept a border compromise only if it includes — or at least substantially mirrors — a severely restrictive bill they passed last spring. That legislation would revive a series of Trump-era policies, including requiring migrants who don't fit into U.S. detention centers to wait for their immigration court appointments in Mexico, and ending most programs that allow nationals of war-torn and economically devastated countries to temporarily live and work in the United States.

Republican lawmakers have also demanded a limit on the Biden administration's ability to parole such migrants. The compromise has no such restrictions and does not end group-based parole programs.

Supporters argue that their compromise will nevertheless have a tangible impact on border crossings by expanding the government's ability to detain and process migrants and eliminating the need for equal paroles.

Hamed Aleaziz reporting contributed.