Immigration lawyers agree: The border bill would increase invasion

An Associated Press story contributed by three of its top reporters is a great example of journalists missing the forest for the trees. Colleen Long, Zeke Miller and Seung Min Kim, whose titles are White House law enforcement and legal affairs correspondent, chief White House correspondent and White House reporter, respectively, wrote together: “Biden is determined to end the Trump-backed collapse of the border deal as a weapon in the 2024 campaign.”

The gist of the failed Senate border deal story doesn’t address the most crucial point: Would the bill meet its stated goal of securing the border?

As President Joe Biden continued his endless search for additional funding for Ukraine, he gambled that, as part of the same package, he could meet U.S. demands that he secure the U.S.-Mexico border. In his press release, Biden wrote that the bill includes “the toughest and fairest set of border reforms in decades. I wholeheartedly support it. It will make our country safer, our border more secure….”

Obviously, Biden’s conclusion would be positive. The deal was negotiated by two Democrats: faux-independent Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who caucuses with Democrats, deep-blue Chris Murphy of Connecticut and a Republican sacrificial lamb, James Lankford of Oklahoma, whose home state is safely 600 miles from Eagle Pass , the landing point for thousands of arriving illegal immigrants. A more appropriate choice to join the negotiating team would have been Ted Cruz of Texas or Marco Rubio of Florida, whose voters are under siege.

The bill was contributed by ousted Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., two of Biden’s confidants. In his 35 years in Congress, Schumer has consistently voted against border and interior enforcement and in favor of more liberal asylum standards and higher annual refugee caps.

Critics, including former President Donald Trump, emphasized that the bill was harmful to the homeland and did nothing to secure the border, instead assuring that illegal crossings would continue and that many illegal immigrants would continue to receive positive benefits .

At a rally in Nevada, Trump, after cementing his position as the far-reaching frontrunner of the Republican Party, made his feelings known. “As the leader of our party, there is no chance that I will support this horrible betrayal at the American border,” he said. “I’ll fight it all the way.” He then added, “A lot of senators are trying to respectfully say they blame me. I say it’s okay. Please blame me. Please.”

Trump’s statement provided Biden with the fodder he plans to use during the intense summer campaign months. Again, Trump’s position, like Biden’s, is predictable. He knows that immigration is voters’ biggest concern, and his statement plays to his advantage.

The bill cannot be both “the toughest and fairest set of border reforms in decades” and “a betrayal of America’s open borders.” The AP should have focused on Biden and Trump’s differing views on the immigration bill, S. Amdt.1388 through H.R. 815, and delved into whether the bill is bad, as the former president claimed, or whether the incumbent president is on solid ground when he emphasized that the bill offered the solution to the border crisis.

It would be a challenge for the AP to delve into the weeds of the bill, as the senators’ proposed 400-page legislation was written with typical congressional confusion. Immigration law is difficult for laypeople to understand, especially its four hundred pages.

AP missed an opportunity to reach out to legal experts to help answer the simple question: Is the Senate bill good or bad for the nation?

Nolan Rappaport, a Democrat who opines on The Hill, has excellent credentials. For three years, Rappaport was seconded to the House Judiciary Committee as an executive branch immigration law expert and then served a four-year term as immigration counsel for the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims. Before serving on the Judiciary Committee, he spent 20 years writing decisions for the Board of Immigration Appeals.

Rappaport’s summary of the amendment was succinct: “the Border Act would not secure the border. Among other weaknesses, it does not address the most serious problem, which is that Biden has released so many asylum seekers into the country that our asylum system has broken down.”

Other professional legal advice came from Andrew Arthur of the Center for Immigration Studies, whose two-decade-plus career included a stint as counsel on the House Judiciary Committee, where he oversaw immigration issues. After five years on House Judiciary, he was appointed to the immigration bench, where he served as an immigration judge for eight years.

Arthur came to the same conclusion as Rappaport: “The bill fails to close the vast majority of loopholes that smugglers have been exploiting for a decade to move illegal immigrants (and migrant families and children in particular) into the United States . Worse, it codifies some of them.”

One of the loopholes Arthur referred to was “the low standard for ‘credible fear’ for border migrants seeking asylum.”

In short, the amendment would legalize border chaos by allowing up to 5,000 illegal entries per day, potentially 1.85 million illegal immigrants per year, before the border closure is necessary. However, the border closure guidelines are time-limited, and the unreliable Biden and Mayorkas have discretionary power to determine how and when they will use the authority granted.

Biden does not need legislative action to close the border, and the administration’s support of the bill, which the Senate rejected, is an open admission of its failures. The proposed limit of 5,000 illegal entries per day proves that Biden could close the border to illegal migrants in an instant if he had the will to do so.

The border solution Americans want is to enforce existing immigration laws; no new legislation needed.

Joe Guzardi is an analyst at the Institute for Sound Public Policy who has written about immigration for more than thirty years. Contact him at [email protected].