Former President Donald Trump once again railed against the bipartisan border deal that is being hammered out in the Senate, writing in a Saturday morning Truth Social post: “CLOSE THE BORDER!”
But President Joe Biden has already pledged to “shut down the border” if Congress would pass the border package, praising the deal in a statement meant to help salvage it late Friday.
The yet-to-be-finalized legislation would pair wartime aid to Ukraine and Israel with border and immigration reforms meant to address the record influx of migrants on the southern U.S. border. A bipartisan group of senators has been working to pull it together for months.
Trump appears intent on tanking it. This week, he called the compromise “meaningless” and a “gift to the Radical Left Democrats,” and has directly pressured GOP lawmakers to kill it.
Trump allies, including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), have echoed the former president’s statements — prompting Democrats to accuse the Republicans of blatant hypocrisy, considering how long the GOP has spent calling for new border measures.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) this week told GOP senators that the “politics on this have changed” because of Trump’s renewed push to make immigration his main 2024 campaign issue, according to Punchbowl News. McConnell reportedly said of Trump on Wednesday “We don’t want to do anything to undermine him.”
Trump continued to bash the compromise on Truth Social, fearmongering about “terrorists” supposedly “pouring in.”
“A BAD BORDER DEAL IS FAR WORSE THAN NO BORDER DEAL!” he wrote.
While the text and precise details of the deal have not been publicly released, Biden said in his Friday night statement that it would give him new power to close the border.
“What’s been negotiated would — if passed into law — be the toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border we’ve ever had in our country,” Biden said in his statement.
“It would give me, as President, a new emergency authority to shut down the border when it becomes overwhelmed. And if given that authority, I would use it the day I sign the bill into law,” he said.
Terms of the deal would, according to The New York Times, require the president to shut down the border if the number of migrants attempting to cross surpasses 5,000 on any given day. In recent weeks, daily migrant apprehensions on the southern U.S. border have surpassed 10,000.