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Haiyun Jiang

<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/candidates/joe-biden-2024/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">President Biden</a> sought to make the apparent collapse of a border security compromise a major issue in the presidential campaign on Tuesday, saying the bipartisan effort to tackle immigration is on life support because former president <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/donald-trump/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Donald Trump</a> wants to weaponize the nation’s immigration quagmire for political gain.

Biden, who mentioned Trump by name less than a minute into remarks from the White House, urged Congress to pass the $118 billion Senate bill on border security and aid for Israel and Ukraine. But if the legislation dies, as many lawmakers on both sides expect, he said he would use his bully pulpit for the next nine months to tell Americans that his Republican adversaries had placed fealty to Trump over their duty to the country.

“For the last 24 hours, [Trump has] done nothing, I’m told, but reach out to Republicans in the House and the Senate and threaten them and try to intimidate them to vote against this proposal. It looks like they’re caving,” Biden said. “Frankly, they owe it to the American people to show some spine and do what they know to be right.

“If the bill fails, I’m going to be absolutely sure about something: The American people are going to be aware of why it failed. … Every day between now and November the American people are going to know the only reason the border is not secure is Donald Trump and his MAGA Republican friends.”

Whether that message succeeds or not, Biden’s remarks signal an effort to turn the political tables on illegal immigration, an issue on which polls suggest he is deeply vulnerable. As the race for the White House barrels toward a likely rematch of 2020, Trump and Biden are jockeying for advantage on one of the most incendiary issues in American politics.

Trump rose to political prominence campaigning on immigration and has made addressing the border core to his <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/election-2024/?itid=lk_inline_manual_17" target=_blank>2024 election</a> message, as he did in 2016. He has told Republican lawmakers that they should not help Democrats pass major immigration legislation before November’s election.

Biden allies concede privately that immigration has become one of his greatest vulnerabilities,<b> </b>driven by periodic images of chaos at the southern border during his presidency. He and aides have enmeshed themselves in the minutiae of border activity and migration patterns, according to a former White House official, seeing them as central to the president’s reelection.

When the bipartisan border security deal was released Sunday, Biden issued a supportive statement saying it “includes the toughest and fairest set of border reforms in decades.” Last month, he had said that if the bill were to become law, he would use new emergency powers it granted him to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/01/26/biden-vows-shut-down-an-overwhelmed-border-if-senate-deal-passes/" target=_blank>shut down the border</a> “the day I sign the bill.”

Biden's journey from blasting harsh immigration measures to vowing to close the border

On Tuesday, he took aim at what he framed as Republican hypocrisy on the issue, adding to his argument about the direction of the party since the ascent of Trump. Biden has sought to characterize his GOP opponents as extremists beholden to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” ideology, unwilling to make even rational compromises if chaos yields political gain. Biden now threatens to make the bill Exhibit A.

The legislation was negotiated over the past two months by Sens. James Lankford (R-Okla.), Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and includes some of the top demands on immigration made by Republicans in recent months and years — including their broad insistence that any additional aid to Ukraine be tied to a slate of tough border policies.

The bill would give the president emergency power to deny entry to migrants when the Border Patrol catches an average of at least 4,000 people improperly crossing the border each day over seven days; such a closure would be required if the crossings hit 5,000 a day. The deal also includes tougher standards for asylum and a major expansion of detention capacity, among other things.

In addition, the legislation would provide $14.1 billion to Israel in its war against <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/israel-hamas-war/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Hamas</a> and allocates more than $60 billion in additional aid to Ukraine, which the administration has said is desperately needed to support American allies.

Still, the bill’s Republican opponents argue that it falls far short of what is needed. Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) said in a statement Monday that its provisions are “disastrous, and completely ignore the fact that Joe Biden has every authority he needs to shut down the border right now — he could do it right this very minute, he simply has no interest in addressing the crisis he created.”

Schmitt added, “This bill was negotiated in secret for months, and now they expect us to vote without real time for debate and review. For these reasons and many other glaring issues with this bill, I’ll be voting no, and I’m sure many of my colleagues will do the same.”

That is a notable departure from the position of GOP leaders a few months ago. In early December, Senate Republicans <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/12/06/ukraine-israel-aid-biden-senate/" target=_blank>killed an aid package</a> for Ukraine and Israel, demanding that it include tough immigration measures. Democrats, worried about the potency of the border issue, agreed, bowing to many of the Republican demands while dropping some of their own priorities — such a path to citizenship for people brought to the United States illegally as children.

The bill’s supporters say it includes concessions from both sides. Republicans “are ready to kill the national security supplemental package, even with the border provisions that they so fervently demanded,” Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on the Senate floor Tuesday. “Those reports are disturbing because this is a good bill, a bipartisan bill, that will address the problems at the border directly, expeditiously, seriously.”

Still, the bill’s chances of passage seemed slimmer with each passing hour.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and his leadership team said in a joint statement that the legislation would actually encourage more illegal immigration. “Any consideration of this Senate bill in its current form is a waste of time,” they wrote. “It is DEAD on arrival in the House. We encourage the U.S. Senate to reject it.”

Other Republicans said Biden was merely seeking to avoid a political problem of his own making. “Joe Biden stopped wall construction, ended ‘Remain in Mexico,’ reinstated catch-and-release, and more,” said Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Tex.). “He made policy choices that caused this — and his attempt to pretend otherwise is absurd.”

In a news conference Tuesday afternoon, several Republican senators said that just because the bill was negotiated in a bipartisan way does not mean they are obligated to accept it. And they contended that even if some of the opposition from their colleagues is overheated, conservatives have legitimate qualms with aspects of the bill.

“Some people are repeating the original lie from Trumpworld that the bill ‘codifies’ letting in 5,000 migrants a day. That is not true,” said John Barrasso (Wyo.), the third-ranking Senate Republican. “But then there are more good-faith people who are objecting to stuff in there that actually exists, such as paying for attorneys for child migrants, or a loophole that allows the president to end the national border emergency function in a national security crisis, or expedited work authorizations for asylum seekers.”

Lankford, who led negotiations from the Republican side for two months, said he was “legitimately surprised” by his GOP colleagues’ quick rejection of the bill. He attributed some of the opposition to the political climate and to Republicans’ reluctance to help Biden on a potent issue.

“Now we get to this moment, and I’ve got so many colleagues that are backing away,” Lankford told CNN. “I’m not saying it’s all based on the political reasons — some will have legitimate issues and say, ‘Hey, I don’t like this part of the bill’ or ‘I wish there was more in it’ — but some are backing away also based on the politics of the moment.”

Trump’s remaining opponent in the GOP primary, former U.N. ambassador <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/candidates/nikki-haley-2024/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Nikki Haley</a>, also criticized Republicans for what she called a politically motivated position aimed at helping the former president regain the White House.

“It’s irresponsible to say that Congress has to wait until a general election because Trump is worried that he’s going to lose,” Haley told Fox News. “There’s a lot of reasons we’ve got to worry that Trump is going to lose, but you don’t sacrifice national security to do it.”

Biden’s comments Tuesday signaled that he intends to highlight Republicans’ rejection of the immigration package — and tie it to Trump — throughout the coming campaign, hoping to turn a weakness into a strength, or at a minimum soften the damage it might do to his prospects.

Trump “is not interested in solving the border problem. He wants a political issue to run against me,” Biden said. “The American people want a resolution that puts an end to the empty political rhetoric which has failed to do anything for so long.”

He added, “Republicans have to decide: Who do they serve, Donald Trump or the American people?”

<i>Marianna Sotomayor, Liz Goodwin and Toluse Olorunnipa contributed to this report.</i>

An earlier version of this story misidentified the home state of Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.). The story has been corrected.

2021: Polk Award - Justice Reporting category

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, bachelor's in journalism and mass communication

Cleve R. Wootson Jr. is a White House reporter for The Washington Post.

Cleve R. Wootson Jr.

Biden vows to make collapse of border bill a major campaign issue

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