Sen. Ron Johnson seeks to condition Ukraine aid to metrics on Mexico border crossings

WASHINGTON – While Senate negotiators deliberate over border policy changes to attach to foreign aid packages, Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson plans to put forward his own proposal: Condition any aid to Ukraine on southern border crossing benchmarks.

Specifically, Johnson wants the United States to release funding to Ukraine on a monthly basis and only if the U.S. government can meet metrics showing a decrease in illegal border crossings. Should the Biden administration fail to meet a benchmark, Johnson said, a tranche of funding for Ukraine would be withheld.

“With this lawless administration and a president who actually wants an open border, what you need to do is… make the funding contingent on actual benchmarks,” Johnson told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Tuesday. “The metric would be number of migrants that have come into America, either released or detected gotaways.”

Johnson’s proposal, which is not yet finalized and faces a steep uphill battle in a Democratic-controlled Senate, would come as a bipartisan group of six senators — Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., Chris Murphy, D-Conn., Michael Bennet, D-Colo., James Lankford, R-Okla., Thom Tillis, R-N.C., and Tom Cotton R-Ark. — attempt to reach a border deal before the end of the year that would allow Congress to send billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine to support its ongoing war with Russia.

Republicans in the House have made clear that any additional funds for Ukraine would need to be tied to border policy changes. And Senate Republicans in recent weeks have demanded stricter asylum laws in exchange for supporting President Joe Biden’s $106 billion package that includes aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, as well as money for the southern border.

Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer on Sunday said the chamber could vote on the package as soon as next week. In a letter to colleagues, the New York Democrat called passing the package “one of the most important tasks we must finish.”

He accused Republicans of trying to “inject a decades old, hyper-partisan issue into overwhelmingly bipartisan priorities” with their push for border changes.

“For weeks, long weeks, a handful of Republicans have dangerously tried to link Ukraine aid and make our support for democracy in the west — a pivotal issue that history will remember us for — conditional on passing hard-right border policy,” Schumer told reporters Tuesday. “You can know one thing for sure: That it’s the Republicans holding this up by their insistence on an extraneous and partisan issue that there’s always difficulty in coming to an agreement on.”

Johnson on Tuesday called the situation at the U.S. southern border “a clear and present danger to this country right now” and said he would not support any border legislation that does not include metrics measuring border crossings.

Illegal crossings of the U.S.-Mexico border have risen in recent years. U.S. Customs and Border Protection encountered more than 2 million migrants in both 2022 and 2023, up from 1.6 million in 2021 and 405,000 in 2020, according to data from October. Johnson has estimated that between 4 million and 5 million people had crossed the southwest border over the last two years.

The use of benchmarks, Johnson maintained, “keeps the pressure on the administration.”

Asked about the benchmarks, Johnson declined to elaborate on the exact metrics he’d like to see, noting that the benchmarks would depend on the piece of Ukraine legislation his measure is tied to. His plan would not require Congress to vote on a Ukraine package every month, he said, but rather would divide up an approved funding request to be disbursed on a monthly, conditional basis.

(A $60 billion aid package, he said as an example, would be divided up into monthly installments of $5 billion.)

North Dakota Republican Sen. John Hoeven is working on similar legislation to "include as part of an agreement to provide additional aid to Ukraine," his office told the Journal Sentinel. A spokeswoman said Hoeven "believes we need concrete benchmarks to prove the administration is enforcing our immigration laws."

It was not immediately clear whether both men were pursuing similar border benchmarks. But a spokeswoman for Johnson said Hoeven's legislation could include border policy changes, while Johnson's bill will focus on metrics.

Senate Republican leaders this week doubled down on the need to address the situation at the southern border. Democrats, however, have expressed urgency in the push to get Ukraine supplemental support. Some have claimed the Ukrainian army is running out of ammunition, and others have noted Ukrainian civilians and first responders will need help as winter sets in.

“It doesn’t sound like a viable option at all,” Bennet, a Colorado Democrat and one of the border policy negotiators, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel of Johnson’s planned proposal.

“Ukraine is in a fight not just for Ukraine but for democracy both here and abroad,” Bennet added. “I don’t understand some people around here that don’t get that… Trying to tie the American people’s support for this democracy to policy disputes or political disputes in this moment I think is incredibly short-sighted.”

Bennet noted that a failure to support Ukraine could result in Russia’s recapture of Ukrainian cities and territory and raises questions about how China could pursue its ambitions in Taiwan.

He declined to discuss specific details of the ongoing border negotiations but said Congress needs to provide support to Ukraine “whether we get to an agreement on the border or not."

“What’s staggering to me is that Putin knows he could lose on the battlefield in Ukraine. He could lose,” said Bennet, a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. “The battlefield he’s trying to win on is the battlefield of Capitol Hill and the battlefield of the United States Senate.”

“We cannot give him that victory, and I don’t think we will," he said. "But that’s what’s at stake.”

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Ron Johnson seeks to tie Ukraine aid to metrics on border crossings