EAGLE PASS, Texas — U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson led about 60 fellow Republicans in Congress on a visit Wednesday to the Mexican border to demand hard-line immigration policies in exchange for backing President Joe Biden’s emergency wartime funding request for Ukraine. He expressed serious doubts about whether he would support a bipartisan compromise.
The trip to Eagle Pass, Texas, came as the Senate engages in delicate negotiations in hopes of striking a deal.
With the number of illegal crossings into the United States topping 10,000 on several days last month, the border city has been at the center of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s Operation Lone Star, his nearly $10 billion initiative that has tested the federal government’s authority over immigration and elevated the political fight over the issue.
An agreement in the lengthy talks in Washington could unlock Senate GOP support for Biden’s $110 billion package for Ukraine, Israel and other U.S. security priorities. In meetings, Sens. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz, James Lankford, R-Okla., and Chris Murphy, D-Conn., are trying to make progress before Congress returns to Washington next week.
But Johnson, R-La., told The Associated Press during the border tour that he was holding firmly to the policies of a bill passed by House Republicans in May without a single Democratic vote. It would build more of the border wall and impose new restrictions on asylum seekers. Democrats called the legislation “cruel” and “anti-immigrant,” and Biden promised a veto.
“If it looks like H.R. 2, we’ll talk about it,” Johnson said of any border legislation that emerges from the Senate.
At a news conference, Johnson also suggested he could use a looming government funding deadline as further leverage.
“If President Biden wants a supplemental spending bill focused on national security, it better begin with defending America’s national security,” he said. Johnson added: “We want to get the border closed and secured first.”
Biden has expressed willingness to make policy compromises as the historic number of migrants crossing the border is an increasing challenge for his 2024 reelection campaign. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and White House staff have been involved in the Senate negotiations.
“We’ve got to do something,” Biden told reporters Tuesday night. He said Congress should approve his national security proposal because it also includes money for managing the influx of migrants. “They ought to give me the money I need to protect the border,” he said.
Administration officials have criticized Johnson’s trip as a political ploy that will do little to solve the problem. White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said Republicans were compromising national security by threatening to shut down the government and delaying approval of funding for additional border security.
“When they’re at the border, they’re going to see the magnitude of the problem and why we have said now for about three decades, their broken immigration system is in desperate need of legislative reform,” Mayorkas told CNN on Wednesday. “So we are focused on the solutions, and we hope that they will return to Washington and focus on the solutions as well.”
House Republicans contend that Mayorkas’ management of the border has amounted to a dereliction of his duties and they are moving ahead with rare impeachment proceedings against a Cabinet member, with a first committee hearing on the matter scheduled for next week. Mayorkas told MSNBC he would cooperate with an inquiry.
During parts of December, border crossings in Eagle Pass, as well as other locations, swamped the resources of Customs and Border Protection officials. Authorities closed cargo rail crossings in Eagle Pass and El Paso for five days and shut down border crossings in the Arizona city of Lukeville.