A heck of a week on the immigration front

By Joe Guzzardi
Syndicated columnist

The Senate’s awful non-enforcement, immigration-acceleration bill is dead. The proposed $118 billion Emergency National Security Appropriations Act (ENSAA) is so terrible that it never got off the ground. 

Misleadingly labeled bipartisan, two pro-expansion Senators, Arizona’s faux Independent Kyrsten Sinema, Connecticut’s deep-blue Democrat Chris Murphy, and Oklahoma’s clueless James Lankford, safely five years away from his next re-election bid, were the chief negotiators. 

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell cheered them on from the sidelines. Schumer and McConnell may not agree on much, but they are united in favor of unlimited immigration.

After what all parties claim was months of intense give and take debate, the negotiators arrived at a final product that will worsen, not improve, President Biden’s self-created border crisis. 

The long-awaited details of the Senate’s bill, which also provides funding for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, dropped Sunday night against House Speaker Mike Johnson’s warning that a bad immigration bill would be dead on arrival. Sure enough, the Senate’s proposal was worse than Johnson anticipated.

Johnson, in his statement after studying the text, wrote that among its many flaws, the bill grants immediate work permission to asylum seekers but excludes meaningful reforms. The language allows illegals, including family units, to be “released from physical custody” which effectively gives cover to Biden’s catch and release policy. 

Disastrously, the Senate proposal required the release of “a minimum of 1,400 inadmissible [but work authorized] aliens each calendar day cumulatively across the southwest land border ports of entry.” Senate leaders, skilled in duplicity, are promoting their bill as an immigration crackdown.

The proposal establishes an emergency authority to shut down the border when a 5,000 daily average aliens encounters over a consecutive seven-day period is reached or 8,500 encounters in a single day.  But the bill’s fine points allow Biden to suspend this authority at his discretion, which could allow for thousands more illegal immigrants to cross.

The bill’s so-called shutdown authority is riddled with loopholes that grant discretionary authority to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who has for more than three years proven he will defiantly undermine immigration law and keep the border open. 

The bill also leaves unchallenged Biden’s parole authority abuse, and provides $1.4 billion to NGOs  to transport and house illegal immigrants in hotels through the FEMA Shelter and Services Program. 

Although CBP encounters since October 1 exceed one million and 1,000 daily average gotaways, a total that includes suspected terrorists and known criminals since the current fiscal year began, Mayorkas barely escaped impeachment in a 214-216 vote. 

The three GOP lawmakers who voted against impeachment were Reps. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement, Ken Buck, R-Colo., and Mike Gallagher, R-Wis. McClintock was a disappointing defection especially since he represents a border state. After the vote, Homeland Security Chair Mark Green (R-TN) said that the House expects leadership to bring the impeachment resolution back to the floor for a vote after absent GOP members return.

The correct number of illegal aliens that should be admitted daily is zero. 

Even those very few illegal immigrants found to have a truthful credible fear of persecution asylum claims must be detained until their cases have been fully adjudicated as per the Immigration and Naturalization Act. Under established federal law, no illegals should be getting in. Months ago, the House passed HR-2, a bill that would have resolved much of the border chaos, but Senate leadership sat on it for nine months and let it languish without acting.

As internal opposition roiled within the Upper Chamber about its bill’s future, supporters realized that the body could not reach the required 60-vote threshold in a 51-49 divided Senate.  GOP members blocked further action on ENSAA. Schumer devised a new game plan, a $95.3 standalone bill that strips the immigration provisions out but leaves the Ukraine and Israel foreign aid funding intact.

The Senate’s foreign aid vote, tentatively scheduled for February 9, will, regardless of its outcome, keep the Beltway buzzing. If the Senate passes the funding-only version, the ball will back in Speaker Johnson’s court who has promised that border security would be “the hill to die on”---without it, the House would not move forward on Ukraine funding. 

If he breaks his enforcement vow, Johnson’s job could be at stake. Under a deal former Speaker Kevin McCarthy made last January that helped him secure the position, any single House member can force a vote on a motion to vacate. At least a dozen conservatives have indicated that they would be willing to begin the process to remove Johnson.

On Capitol Hill, the drama never ends.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst who has been writing about immigration for more than 30 years.