The contours of the immigration debate take shape

The contours of the immigration debate take shape

In this divided Congress, the parameters of the debate over border security and immigration are coming into focus, with the issue expected to play out in the two years leading up to the 2024 election. 

• President Biden has started paying closer attention to the issue and on Sunday made his first visit to the U.S.-Mexico border since taking office, after debuting new immigration measures last week. Those moves come as Biden prepares to announce whether he will run for reelection.
• A bipartisan group of senators is on the border and trying to move forward on a deal.
• The new House Republican majority is holding its hard line, and it is ready to spend the next two years portraying the Biden administration as overseeing a lawless border and pushing to pass legislation to continue building former president Donald Trump’s border wall. 

The renewed engagement on immigration is an early indicator of how volatile the issue will be over the next two years and how important each party believes it could be to the outcome of the 2024 election.

“It is undeniable that our federal immigration system is broken and has been broken for many, many years,” Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) said Monday at a news conference in El Paso.

But the dynamics are extremely tricky for each party and each chamber of Congress. Perhaps more so now than in the past 15 years, when Congress tried and failed twice to pass comprehensive immigration legislation.

Biden’s renewed focus on the border could help him with more moderate voters, while angering liberals who were buoyed by his early, firm rejection of Trump’s immigration policies. 

Republicans have to navigate a base that fervently wants tougher border policies and the desire by some members to show that some kind of deal is on the table — or at least an openness to one — as they try to attract more centrist voters.

Watch the interplay among Biden, Senate Republicans and House Republicans. Does Biden embrace the bipartisan effort in the Senate to show he’s open to a deal while portraying House Republicans as extreme on the issue? And how do House Republicans react if Senate Republicans negotiate with Democrats on an issue they see as a vulnerable spot for Biden and his party?

A bipartisan group of senators is intent on finding a compromise that can pass the chamber. 

Sinema, joined by Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), is leading a two-day trip to the border in Texas and Arizona. They worked during the last Congress on immigration legislation that would increase border security funding and provide legal status for “dreamers,” foreign-born people who were brought to the United States illegally as children or who overstayed their visas as children.

Republican Sens. John Cornyn (Tex.), Jerry Moran (Kan.) and James Lankford (Okla.), along with Democratic Sens. Chris Murphy (Conn.), Mark Kelly (Ariz.) and Christopher A. Coons (Del.), joined the trip.

But finding 60 votes in the Senate on an issue that has been demagogued for political purposes on both sides of the aisle will prove difficult.

Coons said the Sinema-Tillis framework is “a good start.” 

“We have to try” to find an agreement, he added in a text message to The Early.  

Members of the House Freedom Caucus have pushed House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to prioritize a border plan by Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.), part of their agreement in helping him obtain his leadership position.

The proposal would continue to build the wall and increase enforcement of immigration laws against migrants trying to cross the border. It does not address immigrants already in the United States, including dreamers. 

Any legislation to secure the border would go through the House Homeland Security Committee. Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.), a member of the House Freedom Caucus, was appointed to lead the panel on Monday, but his office hasn’t yet answered questions on whether the Roy proposal will be central to any legislation considered. 

Not all House Republicans are onboard with Roy’s plan, and every vote matters with a slim majority.

Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Tex.), whose district includes hundreds of miles of the border along Texas, said he’ll “just have to see” if a border security-only bill is something he could support.

• “You know what’s great about the 118th Congress is every member has a vote. And it only takes, you know, a handful of members to really dictate whether things pass or don’t pass around here,” Gonzales said.

Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) has a bill that combines border security and treating undocumented immigrants with “dignity.” 

She cautioned Republicans against moving only on border security legislation.

“We’re talking about millions of people who do not have a dignified status,” she said. “It’s immoral. It’s not Christian. And it’s wrong that we as a society allow for millions and millions of people to live in the shadows.”

Biden met with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Monday after visiting the border and recently releasing a plan that will send more border-crossers back into Mexico. Republicans took control of the House pledging to highlight what they describe as the chaos at the border and to potentially impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. 

Biden called on Congress to act, specifically calling out House Republicans.

Despite proposing legislation in the early days of his presidency, Biden essentially ignored the issue during his first two years in office and has extended some Trump-era policies that he derided on the campaign trail.

“We are glad that he’s talking more about immigration,” said Kerri Talbot, deputy director of the Immigration Hub, an advocacy organization that spent years battling Trump and has concerns with some of Biden’s new enforcement mechanisms. “We do think that issue does need more attention.”

Huge thanks to Marianna Sotomayor for help reporting!

Consternation over side deals made to get McCarthy the gavel

After a delay because of the prolonged House speaker election, House Republicans are getting down to business. 

They passed a rules package for governing the House Monday night with just one defection, Gonzales. The package is meant to reduce the power of the speaker and empower rank-and-file members to legislate.

Despite Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s win on getting the intensely negotiated rules package adopted, Marianna and Leigh Ann write, “much more consternation exists over the closed-door ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ that helped broker the deal for 15 holdouts to support McCarthy for the speakership. Those details were not made public and won’t be included in the congressional record, but they will be watched closely by members who signed on to the plan — McCarthy, his closest allies, some moderates and the holdouts.”

• Those concessions place limits on new spending, including defense spending, which has frustrated some defense hawks. 
• Leadership also agreed to prioritize for a vote an aggressive border security bill that would build a wall along the southern border, according to multiple aides and members familiar with the agreement, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail private conversations. 
• The House would also vote on legislation to establish term limits for members to serve six terms or 12 years, a proposal that would require a constitutional amendment.

The House also passed its first bill, which would rescind $71 billion of funding passed by Democrats last year to beef up IRS enforcement of wealthy tax evaders. 

Democrats argue Republicans have greatly distorted what the funding would go toward, our colleague Tony Romm reports. “The criticisms came in the wake of a report Monday from the Congressional Budget Office, which found that clawing back IRS funds would curtail its ability to collect unpaid taxes, adding about $114 billion to the deficit over the next decade.”

The House will vote today to establish two committees: a select committee that will focus on competition with China on economic and security issues to be chaired by Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government to be chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). This panel will have broad authority and could investigate the Justice Department’s investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Other House GOP actions Monday:

• House Republicans pass ethics changes that Democrats say would hamper probes. By Amy B Wang.
• House GOP to embark on sweeping probe of covid origin, U.S. response. By Tony Romm.

Justice Dept. reviewing classified documents found in Biden’s post-VP office

Et tu Biden? “The Justice Department has launched a review into the discovery of classified documents at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Engagement, an institute in downtown Washington, D.C., that Joe Biden started after serving as vice president,” people familiar with the matter told our colleagues Tyler Pager, Devlin Barrett, Jacqueline Alemany and Perry Stein. “Roughly 10 documents were found.”

• “While the Biden case has obvious echoes of the Mar-a-Lago investigation, the details provided by Biden’s lawyer on Monday suggest key differences that could factor heavily into whether the Biden documents become a criminal matter. … The Biden documents were discovered by the president’s lawyers and voluntarily turned over to authorities. By comparison, in Trump’s case, [National Archives and Records Administration] officials pressed for material to be returned, then Trump’s office was served with a grand jury subpoena demanding their return.”

Special counsel loading in 3 … 2 … 1: Republicans have lodged attacks against Biden since CBS News first reported the discovery. Trump contrasted the Justice Department’s treatment of Biden’s case versus his own, asking, “When is the FBI going to raid the many homes of Joe Biden, perhaps even the White House?”

• Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, asked reporters a similar question: “Is the White House going to be raided tonight? Are they going to raid the Biden center?”

From Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.): 

From Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.): 

From Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.): 

Mostly quiet on the Democratic front: A handful of Democrats — particularly those who served on the committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol — reacted to the discovery. Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (Md.) stressed that, unlike Trump, Biden immediately and voluntarily cooperated with the National Archives and Records Administration, while Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.) expressed some concern.

Biden is in Mexico City for the North American Leaders’ Summit. He will participate in a bilateral meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and take a family photo with Trudeau and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The trio is then expected to participate in a trilateral meeting to discuss trade and North American supply chains.

Student debt: The Education Department is rolling out the details today of Biden’s income-driven repayment plan for federal student loan borrowers. 

Biden announced the plan in August “alongside his program to forgive up to $20,000 in federal student debt per borrower,” our colleague Danielle Douglas-Gabriel reports. Although the Supreme Court is reviewing the legality of the debt-relief program after six Republican-led states sued to block it, the administration is moving ahead with the repayment plan.

Brazil riots put spotlight on close ties between Bolsonaro and Trump

The ties that bind: “As Trump endorsed Jair Bolsonaro for reelection, prominent U.S. election deniers made inroads with Bolsonaro’s movement and family,” our colleagues Michael Kranish and Isaac Stanley-Becker write. His son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, “discussed election fraud with [Stephen K. Bannon] and lunched with former Trump adviser Jason Miller, while Donald Trump Jr. spoke remotely to a gathering in Brazil last year to push claims that outside forces were seeking to undermine Bolsonaro’s campaign.”

• “The parallels between Trump and Bolsonaro show how an anti-democratic ideology embraced by Trump has been exported abroad and enlisted by foreign leaders and their allies. … While both Bolsonaro and Trump were ultimately cast out of office, with democratic institutions ratifying the will of voters, the recent turmoil has illuminated how deeply the Trump network has been enmeshed in Bolsonaro’s political world.”

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