Conservatives urge GOP to dig in on border talks

Conservative advocates are calling on congressional leaders to stick to the provisions of the House GOP border proposal amid failing bipartisan talks and a Senate Democratic push to speed up a national security supplemental budget bill.

The Senate is poised to vote on a supplemental budget request that includes aid to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan, plus funding for border security, but not permanent changes to asylum law requested by Republicans, or elements of H.R. 2, a House GOP border security bill.

In a letter addressed to all congressional leaders to be delivered Wednesday, conservative groups called on Congress to adhere to H.R. 2, a plea likely to fall on deaf ears on the Democratic side, where that bill is hugely unpopular.

“There is no reason Members of the House and Senate should accept anything less than the provisions of H.R. 2. Watering down its provisions, simply as a means of obtaining enough votes for other policy priorities should not guide the Senate’s efforts here. The goal should be to end this border crisis,” reads the letter.

The letter’s signers include the Heritage Foundation, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and individuals including Ken Cuccinelli, the former Virginia attorney general who played a key role in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) under former President Trump; Mark Morgan and Tom Homan, top immigration law enforcement officials under Trump; and Christopher Landau, Trump’s ambassador to Mexico.

Though bipartisan negotiations in the Senate are stalled, immigration hawks were emboldened by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who on Tuesday conditioned funding for Ukraine on “transformative change” to border laws.

Senate Appropriations Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) on Tuesday released the text of the supplemental package under considerations, which boosts funding for border enforcement, but does not include changes to asylum law or the administration’s immigration parole powers.

With aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan hanging in the balance, the two sides’ positions on border policy could not be further apart.

Immigration advocates are calling on Democrats to protect humanitarian laws such as asylum and parole — or at least get immigration concessions in return — but conservatives want to curb those protections and take away the Biden administration’s agency to dictate border policy.

“The Biden Administration inherited the most secure border in our lifetimes, but intentionally chose policies to create and maintain the border crisis. As such, the half-measures being contemplated in this Senate ‘border deal’ would simply facilitate the ongoing de-facto amnesty the Biden Administration is granting by processing millions of illegal aliens into American communities,” reads the letter.

And conservatives are threatening to press their position at the polls, where hawkish immigration and border positions are hugely popular with Republican primary voters.

The letter referenced the 2013 immigration reform process, when immigration hawks successfully brought down a comprehensive bipartisan deal, primarying then-Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) out of office in the process.

“The undersigned and the millions of actual voters we represent who support sensible immigration policy are prepared to defeat this ‘deal’ just as we defeated the Gang of Eight bill ten years ago,” reads the letter.