A bipartisan group of lawmakers in Congress is on the verge of striking a deal with the Biden administration that would enact sweeping new border controls, including the authority to pause asylum processing during spikes in migrant crossings, three people familiar with the talks told CBS News.
After weeks of closed-door negotiations, the White House and a trio of senators could unveil an agreement as early as this week, the sources said, requesting anonymity due to the private nature of the conversations. The bill is designed to reduce the unprecedented levels of illegal crossings recorded along the southern border in the past three years.
While GOP Sen. James Lankford, Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy and independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema are close to finalizing the compromise with the White House, any bipartisan immigration proposal would face an uphill battle in the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson and other conservative lawmakers have pushed for even stricter changes to the asylum system.
Divisions among Republican lawmakers over whether to support a border deal with Mr. Biden have also intensified after former President Donald Trump came out against it. At a rally in Las Vegas on Saturday, Trump said he would “rather have no bill than a bad bill.”
According to the Fox News Washington correspondent it looks something like this.
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Mandatory detention of all single adults.
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Mandatory “shut down” of border once average daily migrant encounters hits 5,000. Importantly, this 5,000 number includes 1,400 CBP One app entries at ports of entry per day, and roughly 3,600 illegal crossings per day.
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How is that enforced? Once the 5,000 threshold is hit, a new authority is codified into law that requires Border Patrol to immediately remove illegal immigrants they catch without processing. They would not get to request asylum, they would immediately be removed. This includes removals back to Mexico, and deportations to home countries. This would be a massive change from current policy, which is that once an illegal immigrant reaches US soil, they must be processed via Title 8 and allowed to claim asylum. Under this new authority – they are not processed, and they are mandatorily immediately removed once the “shut down” threshold is reached.
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This “shut down” also takes effect is there are 8,500 migrant encounters in a single day.
-The “shut down” would not lift the next day. It wouldn’t lift until daily encounters are reduced to under 75% of the 5,000 threshold for at least two weeks. This means the “shut down” authority would not lift until two weeks of an average of less than 3,750 migrant encounters per day.
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Some family units will be released with ATD (Alternatives to Detention, ankle monitors etc).
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New removal authority to immediately remove all migrants who do not have valid asylum claims, which will be determined within 6 months rather than the years long process we have right now.
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Any migrant caught trying to cross twice during “shut down” phase would be banned from entering US for one year.
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US will need agreement with Mexico for MX to take back non Mexican illegal immigrants. This hasn’t been ironed out yet.
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President Biden approves of the deal and is ready to sign it as is, right now, and implement the new authority it would give him.
Want to stop illegal immigration? Impose jail time for all businesses that hire undocumented immigrants. Farms, construction, and so on. Tackle the demand side of things and see it improve.
Note, I am very pro immigration, but the hypocrisy of the right on this topic really pisses me off. Exploit their labor, but have harsh penalties for these immigrants so that they don’t “step out of line”.
Hey, I didn’t negotiate it. I’m only reporting.
So basically goodbye asylum seeking.
The US has 2.5m migrant encounter at the border in 2023. So that’s about 6800 people at day. This caps that at 5000.
This basically says that encounters need to be 75% of what is currently being handled, and families will be prioritized.
That’s 1800 people who will be sent back home, potentially to be murdered.
Yeah, it’s not great for people who are desperate for help, but what do you propose as a practical alternative?
Many cities are being hit by unprecedented problems with housing and homelessness, their budgets are tapped out, and they’re asking for federal help. A federal package to aid and shelter increased migration is not going to get support from many Americans, and it definitely won’t get past the GOP house.
Biden basically has 2 practical options. Take people in and piss off major democratic metros that can’t feed and house everyone, or throttle the flow and piss off Americans that don’t want to turn away people in need.
You’ve given part of the solution yourself. Don’t just send them to major metropolitan areas. This town has about 60,000 people in it. There are towns of this size all over the country. Many, many more than major metro areas. We could take in a couple of thousand migrants in this town if the will was there.
The will isn’t there.
The will to be inhumane is.
Governors are already trying to move people around the state to where there are beds, and they’re still asking for help.
For content, previous unprecedented peaks were around 1.6m people a year. 2022 and 2023 have had numbers skyrocketing around 2.4m per year. These throughput caps would dial things back to the previous beefy peaks.
Not to the first 5,000
Everybody will dislike something. Sausage making.
People being sent back to their home country to be murdered = Sausage making.
I suppose this is a more literal form of making sausage since it involves throwing people into a meat grinder.
It would be totally ironic if one of our most iconic symbols had a poem at its base welcoming all immigrants, wouldn’t it?
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You’re right we should fill this country with uneducated people with zero skills. I am sure that won’t come back to bite us all in the ass.
But it’s ok because you can sleep at night knowing how humane you’re being.
What makes you think they are uneducated and have zero skills? Do you think they just sat around in their home countries and did nothing all day?
This is one step away from: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
But maybe you’re a Trump voter.
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I was curious to see how these limits would compare to today’s number, so I was looking at the government’s border data.
Doing the back of the napkin math in 2.47m encounters in 2023, this would basically throttle daily encounters to around 74% of today’s volume.
It looks like previous peaks that got Americans riled up were around 1.6m a year. It’s now it’s around 2.4m a years during 2022 and 2023. I had no idea the numbers shot up that much in the last 2 year. That’s bonkers if I’m interpreting this correctly.
These changes would basically dial things back to the numbers seen during past “holy shit” peaks.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Eagle Pass, Texas — A bipartisan group of lawmakers in Congress is on the verge of striking a deal with the Biden administration that would enact sweeping new border controls, including the authority to pause asylum processing during spikes in migrant crossings, three people familiar with the talks told CBS News.
The agreement is expected to give the executive branch a new legal authority to effectively suspend asylum in between official ports of entry when migrant crossings surpass certain thresholds.
That would affect remote areas in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas where migrants regularly cross into the U.S. illegally to surrender themselves to overtaxed federal immigration officials who often release them because they don’t have the resources to screen everyone for asylum.
On Friday, Mr. Biden said he would use the new powers “the day I sign the bill into law,” calling the emerging deal the “toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border we’ve ever had in our country.”
Those who pass their initial humanitarian protection screenings, including when the “shutdown” authority is in place, would generally be released pending a full review of their cases with immediate eligibility to work in the U.S., a change that would likely be welcomed by Democratic officials in communities struggling to house migrants relying on local services.
The deal is not expected to shut down Biden administration parole programs that allow U.S.-based individuals to sponsor the entry of certain Latin American migrants and Ukrainians, the sources familiar with the talks said.
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