California Democrat Alex Padilla, Republicans blast Senate border deal. Will it pass?

Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., blasted the $118.2 billion border and foreign aid deal that Senate negotiators, after months of prolonged efforts, released Sunday.

The sweeping package that would allow tighter restrictions on asylum-seeking at the U.S.-Mexico border faces tough opposition in the Senate. It also faces an even tougher chance of even getting a vote in the House of Representatives, leaders there said.

Sen. Laphonza Butler, D-Calif., has not commented on the deal, but Padilla was not pleased with the Senate compromise.

Immigration reform has been a top priority for Padilla, who after being sworn into the Senate in 2021 became the first Latino chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship and Border Safety.

“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.”

His office confirmed that in its current form, Padilla opposes the bill. So do many liberal Democrats who also said it excludes important priorities for citizenship pathways and asylum-seeker protections. Also wary are many Republican senators who claim that the package does not go far enough to restrict migrant crossings at the border.

“This is an open-borders bill if I’ve ever seen one,” Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., wrote on social media. “The Democrats are celebrating already.”

Congress hasn’t passed comprehensive immigration reform in decades. The Senate passed a bipartisan measure in 2013 but it went nowhere in the House. Instead, over the years, lawmakers have often used the polarized issue as a political football.

The Senate has a slim Democratic majority, with 49 Republicans and 51 senators who vote with the Democrats. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York intends to bring the deal to a test vote Wednesday. With disagreements on both sides of the aisle, it’s unclear how the deal will secure the 60 votes it needs to advance, especially as former President Donald Trump has lobbied Republican lawmakers not to support it.

If it does pass the Senate, it’s “dead on arrival” in the House, said Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La. Republicans have a razor-thin House majority.

“This bill is even worse than we expected,” Johnson wrote on social media, “and won’t come close to ending the border catastrophe the President has created.”

What’s in the border deal?

Slightly more than $20 billion of the deal is dedicated to the border.

The legislation would let the U.S. Department of Homeland Security limit the ability for migrants crossing the border to seek asylum if the daily average reaches 4,000 encounters in a one-week period.

If that number is reached, the DHS secretary would have the authority to effectively close the border. But if the average surpasses an average of 5,000 crossings per day in a week, or 8,500 on any given day, the department must use this new authority.

If this authority is triggered, the government must process at least 1,400 asylum applications at ports of entry.

Once DHS encounters with migrants fall to a daily average of 75% of those limits for a week, intake processes would be able to restart.

In December 2023, the number of migrants crossing the border hit a record monthly high: Border Patrol arrested almost 250,000 people at the southern border that month. The influx slowed at the beginning of January. Some days in December, the number of migrant encounters reached 10,000, according to federal data.

The newfound authority which would end in three years.

This enhanced authority would not apply to unaccompanied children or people who have medical emergencies or an imminent threat to their lives.

But if passed, the legislation would raise the eligibility standard for claiming asylum. It also aims to reduce the asylum-seeking process to six months from what can now take several years.

The package puts forth a new U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services process to decide an asylum claim without the immigration court system.

The measure would provide unaccompanied children who are 13 or under a government-funded lawyer. And it would allow migrants facing expedited removal 72 hours to find a lawyer to fight deportation.

Padilla said the bill “is in conflict with our international treaties and obligations to provide people with the opportunity to seek asylum. It fails to address the root causes of migration. And it fails to provide relief for Dreamers, farm workers, and the other undocumented long-term residents of our country who contribute billions to our economy, work in essential jobs, and make America stronger.”

Padilla’s office said that he privately and publicly urged his priorities upon Senate negotiators for the package.

Negotiations were led by Sens. James Lankford, R-Okla., Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., who caucuses with Democrats.

There legislation includes more than $60 billion for military aid to Ukraine and $14 billion for Israel. There’s $10 billion for humanitarian aid, including in Gaza and Ukraine.

California lawmakers and the deal

Quieter since the deal’s release was Butler, whom Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed to serve in the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s seat until a candidate is elected in November to take over.

Butler, 44, did not release a statement on the deal; her office did not yet respond to a request for comment Monday morning.

Padilla, 50, entered politics in the 1990s for a very personal fight against California’s Proposition 187, which aimed to prevent undocumented immigrants from obtaining non-emergency health care, public education and other services. (Prop. 187 faced a legal challenge and was declared unconstitutional within four days of its passing.)

Padilla’s parents, Mexican immigrants, met in Los Angeles, married and had three children: Padilla, his older sister and younger brother. His father was a short-order cook; his mother, a housekeeper.

“When I was sworn into this office, I made a promise that I would fight to fix our outdated immigration system and to create a pathway to citizenship for immigrants who have been forced to live in the shadows of our country for far too long. Not a day has gone by that I have not tried to reach out across the aisle to do exactly that,” Padilla said.

“It is critical that we support our allies in their fight to defend democracy and provide humanitarian relief, but not at the expense of dismantling our asylum system while ultimately failing to alleviate the challenges at our border.”

Padilla, a member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, was appointed to the Senate to finish Vice President Kamala Harris’ term when she took the White House job in 2021. He won a full six-year term of his own in November 2022.

Harris, a California Democrat, and President Joe Biden on Sunday urged the Senate to pass the deal quickly.

“This agreement on border security and immigration does not include everything we have fought for over the past three years — and we will continue to fight for these priorities,” Harris said in a statement, “but it shows: we can make the border more secure while preserving legal immigration, consistent with our values as a nation.”