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Among the proposed reforms, the Homeland Security Department would have been given new authority to bar migrants from crossing the border if crossings rose above 5000 on average per day on a given week, or 8500 in a single day.
It also included provisions to raise standards for asylum screening and deliver swift deportation for people who don’t qualify.
Supporters – including Democrats and Republicans in Congress – said it would have also given authorities greater scope to assess cases at the border rather than send them into an already overburdened immigration court system.
Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, said this was a particularly significant step given the backlog is so massive that 3 million cases are pending, and many migrants have to wait years to get a hearing.
“This is the height of cynicism, to have the same members of Congress who are busy saying that we have a crisis at the border, now progressively trying to prevent a measure that could help solve it,” he said.
Chishti said the bill was the first time since 2013 that Democrats and Republicans had agreed on major reforms to address the broken immigration system.
Figures show authorities encountered more than 3.2 million people crossing the border in the year to September 30 – far more than the 1.9 million recorded in 2021, which was Biden’s first year in office.
The thwarting of the bill leaves aid for Israel and Ukraine in jeopardy at a critical time, along with money to safeguard the Indo-Pacific from the threat of China.
In a bid to salvage the foreign aid, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer plans to force a procedural vote on an emergency package that would contain the foreign-aid funding but leave out the border components.
“Republicans have said they can’t pass Ukraine without border. Now they say they can’t pass Ukraine with border. Today, I’m giving them a choice,” Schumer said in the Senate chamber before the border deal was torpedoed. “I urge Republicans to take yes for an answer.”
Donald Trump speaks at the border wall between the US and Mexico in June 2021.Credit: The Monitor
Some Senate Republicans who initially supported the border bill ended up voting against it after House Republicans loyal to Trump declared it “dead on arrival”.
Senate Minority Leader McConnell was previously in favour of advancing it but voted no after realising “that we have no real chance here to make a law”.
And in a sign of the politics at play, James Lankford, one of the bill’s chief GOP negotiators, told the chamber he was threatened by a “popular commentator” who told him: “If you try to move a bill that solves the border crisis during this presidential year, I will do whatever I can to destroy you”.
Lola Lee runs with a US flag during a “Take Our Border Back” convoy and rally in Quemado, Texas, on Saturday. The convoy supported the Texas governor in his fight with the Biden administration over control of the border.Credit: AP
Earlier, Biden had said Democrats would seek to now blame Trump for the border crisis, which is one of the president’s biggest policy problems.
“If the bill fails – I want to be absolutely clear about something – the American people are going to know why it failed,” he told reporters at the White House this week.
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“The voters are going to know that just at the moment we’re going to secure the border and fund these other programs, Trump and the MAGA Republicans said ‘no’ because they’re afraid of Donald Trump.”
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