White House highlights fentanyl trafficking in pressing Republicans on border bill

The White House focused on fentanyl trafficking at the U.S. southern border Wednesday when urging Republicans to pass the bipartisan border security bill when it comes up in the Senate later this week.

In a memo entitled, “While President Biden sides with U.S. Border Patrol, congressional Republicans side with fentanyl traffickers,” senior deputy press secretary Andrew Bates called on GOP lawmakers to choose saving lives over politics.

The memo comes ahead of a vote on the bipartisan border security bill in the upper chamber, which Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is planning for Thursday, three months after Republicans initially blocked the legislation.

“So Congressional Republicans have to choose: will they again decide that politics is more important than stopping fentanyl traffickers and saving the lives of innocent constituents?” Bates said Wednesday. “Joe Biden knows where he stands.”

Senate Republicans are vowing to block the bill, and no Republican senator has said they would vote for it. The bill was endorsed by the National Border Patrol Council and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Bates, in the memo, hit Republicans for not passing the bipartisan border bill after former President Trump urged them to oppose it, so the border would stay a major issue for Election Day.

He outlined that the legislation would fund machines to detect fentanyl in vehicles crossing the border and would provide funding to hire new law enforcement personnel at the border.

“Rather than working across the aisle to stop fentanyl trafficking, most congressional Republicans stopped legislation to save American lives from fentanyl,” Bates said in the memo. “What’s worse, those Republican members admitted that the bipartisan deal would work; and they admitted that they opposed it sheerly out of politics, saying that Donald Trump pressured them to vote ‘no’ for his own sake.”

Biden spoke Monday with Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to push for passage of the bill.

The legislation is likely to fail, but it will give Democrats the ability to flip the messaging on the campaign trail and blame the GOP for issues at the border. Meanwhile, Republicans will continue to blame Biden and Democrats for the influx of migrants ahead of November.