The border security reforms proposed by Republicans in return for their support for more aid to Ukraine are a “total non-starter,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Tuesday, The Hill reported.
The New York Democrat said that “if Republicans inject partisanship into otherwise bipartisan priorities, that is only going to make it harder to avoid a shutdown. A group of Senate Republicans released a proposal for border security that they want in exchange for Ukraine funding, and they know full well what they came up with is a total non-starter.”
Schumer added that the proposal was taken largely from the House-passed Secure the Border Act of 2023, which didn’t receive even one Democratic vote.
The Senate GOP proposal would obligate the Department of Homeland Security to again start building the border wall, reform U.S. asylum laws, curtail the administration’s use of humanitarian parole to release unlawful migrants into the United States, and forbid migrants from seeking asylum in the U.S. if they first pass through a safe third country, The Hill reported.
“Senate Republicans basically copy and pasted large chunks of the House’s radical H.R. 2 bill and that’s their asking price for helping Ukraine,” Schumer said. “Making Ukraine funding conditional on the hard-right border policies that can’t ever pass Congress is a huge mistake by our Republican colleagues.”
A White House spokesperson added that another problem with the Senate Republican proposal was that it did not contain anything to create an earned path to citizenship for “Dreamers,” or those who migrated to the country at a young age and have become productive members of American society despite lacking citizenship.
Despite the criticism, Senate Republican Whip John Thune insisted that, eventually, Schumer and other Democrats will soften their position on discussing border security reforms as part of a foreign aid package.
The South Dakota Republican said he would expect Schumer "to say that, and I would expect that to be the initial position of the White House as well, but I think they should start sooner rather than later, if we’re going to get action on a supplemental package, in negotiating with our colleagues that put forward that proposal because it does represent ... a majority view.”
Thune emphasized that “I think [Schumer's] going to have to be prepared to negotiate.”