The Senate decided to release their draft of the so-called border bill late Sunday, finally letting everyone get a look at the THREE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY PAGES that was apparently needed for Senate negotiators to come to an agreement.

An initial read of the bill confirmed that yeah, this is a crap sandwich. Here is what Fox News reporter Bill Melugin, who covers the southern border more faithfully than almost any other reporter, had to say at first pass.

NEW: My initial highlights from the border deal.

– No amnesty/legalization of anyone already in the U.S. illegally.

– Funds an increase in ICE detention capacity to approx. 50,000 from the current 34,000.

– At 7 day rolling average of 5,000 encounters per day, or 8,500…

— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) February 5, 2024

His tweet is very long, but there several things worth highlighting from it.

No amnesty/legalization of anyone already in the U.S. illegally.

At 7 day rolling average of 5,000 encounters per day, or 8,500 encounters in a single day, DHS is *required* to shut the border down, and turn away anyone who crosses. No new asylum claims will be allowed and anybody crossing will be removed. Would end the whole idea of “I made it to U.S. soil, you have to process me.” That would be over, Border Patrol would not process the illegal crosser and they would be removed – no asylum claim permitted, unless its made at a port of entry.

Significantly tougher asylum requirements, and a higher credible fear standard, including three bars to eligibility. 1) Criminal history, 2) Could they have resettled in another country on the way to the US? 3) Could they have resettled somewhere else in their own country? Just saying you’re scared to return home will no longer be enough in initial interview.

Melugin later commented that “immigration activists” not be happy with some of the bill, and this is pretty much it. But if Joe Biden wanted to, he could do all of this without a bill. And then we get to the crap.

$1.4 billion in FEMA funding available for disbursement to NGOs/municipalities, but some of that money doesn’t unlock until key border security metrics are hit with ICE detention beds, ICE & Border Patrol new hires, and at least 1,500 deportation flights.

50,000 new visas over 5 years.

No unaccompanied minors can be removed, and some of these minors will receive attorneys, either pro bono or taxpayer funded.

There is a provision in the bill that would allow the President to suspend the “shut down” authority.
It says: “Authorizes the President to suspend the border emergency on an emergency basis for up to 45 days if it is in the national interest.”

On immigration alone, this border bill should be dead on arrival in the House of Representatives. But then we get into the special poopy dressing that has been added into the crap sandwich to make this a goodie bag of incoming disaster.

First, the Ukraine money. You knew that we weren’t going to get a crap sandwich without a $60 BILLION helping for Ukraine, right?

The $118 billion national security supplemental includes $60 billion for Ukraine, $14.1 billion for Israel, aid for Indo-Pacific allies and the bipartisan border security agreement.

The border security component — which totals $20 billion — would give the federal government temporary authority to expel migrants when the average number of daily crossings exceeds a threshold, end “catch and release” and raise standards for asylum screenings and seek to process claims quicker, among other provisions.

You are reading that correctly. The border gets $20 billion, Ukraine gets $60 billion, and Israel will get $14.1 billion. Taiwan is also slated to get money as well. Speaker Mike Johnson already put forward a standalone bill for Israel, which would give them $17.6 billion. But this border bill is desperately echoing what Joe Biden has been begging for and demanding from Congress – another huge check to Ukraine, with no end in sight to the conflict itself.

Second, this border bill is opening up a pathway to citizenship for Afghan refugees, in a repackaging of last year’s Afghan Adjustment Act. This begins on page 244 of 370, and it is framed as specifically working with the allies that we evacuated out of Afghanistan during the chaotic withdrawl. Except that we took a LOT of people out of Afghanistan at the last minute, we now know that we don’t know who we brought in, and this bill apparently just assumes that everyone who made it to the United States would be absolutely GREAT as a naturalized citizen. I don’t think anyone has a problem accepting our Afghan allies as permanent residents, and possible future citizens – but we’ve already seen that bad guys slipped through the cracks. This provision should make everyone rightfully concerned.

Third, there is a designated $10 billion for “humanitarian aid” which specifically lists Ukraine, the West Bank, and Gaza as its intended targets. Hilariously, there is a provision in the bill that prevents any of that $10 billion from going to the Hamas handmaidens of UNRWA – which serves them right. Still, does anyone believe that this $10 billion will be used appropriately, with little waste, by NGOs and charities that the government chooses?

Are you feeling good about all this money being spent on non-border related issues? Well, Speaker Johnson is not. And he’s not happy with the marketing strategy either.

I’ve seen enough. This bill is even worse than we expected, and won’t come close to ending the border catastrophe the President has created. As the lead Democrat negotiator proclaimed: Under this legislation, “the border never closes.”

If this bill reaches the House, it will be…

— Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) February 5, 2024

Trying to present this bill as “the border never closes” is NOT a selling point.

"The border never closes" is a good summary of this bill, and of Joe Biden's policy.

I can understand why Chris Murphy supports it. I cannot imagine why any Republican supports this atrocious proposal. https://t.co/ekv7LJ8qbO

— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) February 5, 2024

What the actual hell, Senator Lankford?

Sen. James Lankford (Okla), the lead GOP negotiator on the border deal, almost immediately responded to Johnson’s decision, saying that he was “confused” how the bill could be worse than they expected.

“I’m a little confused how it’s worse than they expected when it builds border wall, expands deportation flights, expands ICE officers, border patrol officers, detention beds how it creates a faster process for deportations, clears up a lot of the long-term issues and loopholes that have existed in the asylum law and then gets us an emergency authority that stops the chaos right now on the border,” he said on a call with reporters.

“I’m a little confused,” Lankford continued. “I’ll have to be able to get with the Speaker’s team on that and to be able to find out what part would be ‘worse than what we’d expected’ based on the actual text and hopefully they’ve all had an opportunity to actually read it through the text.”

Could someone buy this guy a clue? He’s crazy if he thinks this border bill is in any way acceptable legislation. The American public is just done with the porous southern border. Setting a new “trigger” that would allow the border to be closed AFTER another 1.8 million people get in, and then the president can simply decide to “suspend” that provision anyway? FORGET IT.

The highlighted language only adds to the egregiousness of deferring to Secretary Mayorkas on enforcing the new border authorities. If President Biden doesn’t want to shut down the border, but Mayorkas does, Biden can just suspend its enforcement for a 45-day period. pic.twitter.com/cDadErUpXd

— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) February 5, 2024

Chuck Schumer is racing to get this bill voted on in the Senate on Wednesday. It could pass in the Senate, but there’s at least one unhappy Democrat there who doesn’t like it – Alex Padilla of California. And there’s more than one Democrat in the House that is against it, too.

“After months of a negotiating process that lacked transparency or the involvement of a single border-state Democrat or member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, it is no surprise that this border deal misses the mark,” Padilla said in a statement. “The deal includes a new version of a failed Trump-era immigration policy that will cause more chaos at the border, not less.”

Earlier Sunday, the progressive Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said that she is unlikely to vote in favor of the measure.

“Congressional Republicans continue to push enforcement-only strategies that have failed for decades,” she said on X, formerly Twitter. “The extreme MAGA Republican Party has absolutely zero interest in actually fixing our immigration system.”

In December, during early negotiations over the deal, CHC Chair Rep. Nanette Diaz Barragan (D-Calif.) joined Padilla in a joint statement criticizing an early form of the agreement.

“We are deeply concerned that the President would consider advancing Trump-era immigration policies that Democrats fought so hard against — and that he himself campaigned against — in exchange for aid to our allies that Republicans already support,” the pair wrote. “Caving to the demands for these permanent damaging policy changes as a ‘price to be paid’ for an unrelated one-time spending package would set a dangerous precedent.”

And yes, the entire point of a “bipartisan” bill is that no one ends up happy. But after looking through the provisions in this “border” bill, I can’t find much in the crap sandwich that should compel any Republican to support it wholesale. The Democrats are just mad that they aren’t getting more of what they want.

Speaker Johnson should send this one back to the Senate with two words: “hard pass.”

Featured image via Pixabay, Pixabay license