Blaze News original: Dems' 'bipartisan' border bill wouldn't solve party's illegal immigration crisis, despite stale claims

Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign has released very few details about the Democratic presidential nominee's policies, despite just roughly two months until the 2024 election.

For weeks, Harris' website failed to list a single goal for her administration, which was a stark contrast to her political opponent, Republican presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump, whose website includes a list of 20 priorities, naming "seal[ing] the border and stop[ping] the migrant invasion" as his number one goal.

Instead of outlining the party's platform, a large part of the Harris campaign's strategy seems to be focused on torching Trump and GOP lawmakers for shooting down the Senate's so-called "bipartisan" border bill introduced earlier this year.

According to Democrats, the legislation would have addressed many of the issues at the southern border — issues that the Biden-Harris administration claims it has been powerless to resolve without the bill being passed by Congress.

But border experts argue those claims about the failed legislation and the administration's lack of authority to close the southern border simply are not true.

What was in the so-called border bill?

With mass illegal immigration a top-of-mind concern for the majority of voters, Harris' campaign is attempting to make quick work of rebranding her failed tenure as the Biden administration's border czar. Instead, the campaign has ramped up efforts to paint Harris as tough on the border — one of the many issues the nominee has flip-flopped on in recent weeks — in hopes of appealing to more Americans hitting the ballot box in November.

As part of its strategy, Harris' campaign and the Democratic Party have been repeating the same stale claim that Republican lawmakers, at the behest of Trump, blocked the Emergency National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, H.R. 815, which Sens. James Lankford (R-Okla.), Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) released in February.

Upon its introduction, the so-called border bill was initially lumped together with funding for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan.

Democrats contended that the $118 billion bill was drafted after months of bipartisan legislative negotiations. The party has repeatedly claimed that the legislation was a "border" bill, slamming Republicans for refusing to pass it into law and thereby faulting them for the illegal immigration crisis.

'This bill is not a border bill, it's an immigration bill.'

The national security supplemental package would have earmarked $20.23 billion — a mere 17% of the total funds — to increase government resources directly or loosely related to addressing the uptick in illegal immigration.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) released the bill's text, noting that the funds would "address existing operational needs and expand capabilities at our nation's borders, resource the new border policies included in the package, and help stop the flow of fentanyl and other narcotics."

U.S. Customs and Border Protection was slated to receive $6.766 billion to "fund operational costs to manage and enhance security" at the southern border, hire additional agents, combat the entry of illicit narcotics, and fund humanitarian services.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement would have received $7.6 billion to supplement transportation costs, increase hiring, and fund the expansion of its Alternatives to Detention program. It is worth noting that ICE's ATD program is exactly as it sounds: a program to avoid traditional detention. Instead, it allows illegal immigrants, most of whom are in removal proceedings or subject to final orders of removal, to walk free within the country, in most cases with minimal supervision.

Funds from the colossal proposed bill would have also supplemented the hiring of additional immigration judges and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services personnel.

A breakdown of the proposed legislation shows that the bulk of American taxpayers' money would have been divvied up as follows: $60.06 billion to support Ukraine, $14.1 billion to aid Israel, and $10 billion for humanitarian aid services in Gaza, West Bank, and Ukraine. This is not an exhaustive list of the non-border-related ways the $118 billion would have been spent.

In addition to allocating funds, the legislation also included provisions that Democratic lawmakers argued would help stem the flow of illegal immigration.

Even the National Border Patrol Council, a staunch critic of the Biden-Harris administration, sponsored the proposed bill, noting that it was far from perfect but would be better than passing nothing at all.

During a House Natural Resources Committee hearing in early February, NBPC Vice President Art Del Cueto explained to lawmakers why the union backed the bill.

"The single biggest challenge we face right now is that just about every illegal immigrant we arrest claims asylum. They are doing this not because they have a valid claim but because they know we do not have the detention capacity to hold them. And, that our immigration court system is overwhelmed. They know that we will release them and give them a court date upwards of 10 years from now," Del Cueto said.

He stated that, if passed, the legislation would implement a "significantly higher standard" for screening illegal aliens claiming asylum at the southern border.

"This standard was actually piloted under the Trump Administration in 2019 and 2020 that led to about 80 percent of the illegal immigrants failing their credible fear interviews," Del Cueto continued. "It also precludes illegal immigrants caught at the border from having access to immigration courts. We will no longer be releasing illegal immigrants with a court date 10 years from now. Asylum officers will quickly decide their status, and we will deport those who fail."

The bill also included emergency authority provisions that would allow the federal government to shut down the border if the average number of encounters reached between 4,000 and 5,000 per day for seven consecutive days. It would have required the administration to close the border if the number of encounters topped 8,500 on a single day.

"No bill is perfect. Are there things that I wish were included in this package and were not — yes. Are there things in the package such as allowing the Administration to continue to parole migrants through the ports of entry that I don't like — yes. However, the cost of inaction by Congress on this issue is enormous," Del Cueto added.

While some of the bill's provisions appeared to invest in increasing border resources to curb the crisis, some critics argued that it would primarily boost personnel resources for funneling illegal immigrants into the country faster.

Former District Attorney Jeanine Pirro said, "This bill is not a border bill, it's an immigration bill."

"This is all about making sure we have enough people to be able to process the illegals, to get them through the legal ports of entry," she added.

Harris' platform? Criticizing Trump

Despite the overwhelming evidence that the Biden-Harris administration has done nearly everything in its power to support open border policies and fuel illegal immigration, Harris' campaign and her supporters continue to claim that Trump is to blame for the crisis.

Just days before her first debate with the former president, Harris’ campaign finally added an issues section to her website, which critics argued listed aspirations and remained light on actual policies. And her plans were not just absent from her campaign website, but they were also sparsely mentioned during the recent Democratic National Convention.

Instead, Harris and her allies spent the majority of the time disparaging Trump, mentioning him nearly 150 times on the first day alone, his campaign claimed. These comments included repeating the talking point that it was his fault that the so-called border bipartisan bill failed.

'If Democrats were serious about securing the border, they would pass my bill, H.R. 2.'

On day one of the convention, Biden stated, "I never thought I'd stand before a crowd of Democrats and refer to a president as a liar so many times. Now, I'm not trying to be funny. It's sad. Trump continues to lie about the border."

"Here's what he won't tell you: Trump killed the strongest bipartisan border deal in the history of the United States that we negotiated with the Senate Republicans," Biden continued.

Former President Barack Obama gave a speech at the DNC, during which he also mentioned the Senate bill.

"[Trump] killed a bipartisan immigration deal written in part by one of the most conservative Republicans in Congress that would have helped secure our southern border because he thought trying to actually solve the problem would hurt his campaign," Obama claimed.

On the final day of the convention, Harris addressed the nation. She promised to "bring back the bipartisan border security bill that [Trump] killed," claiming that she would "sign it into law."

Harris also referred to the failed legislation as the "strongest border bill in decades."

"The Border Patrol endorsed it. But Donald Trump believes a border deal would hurt his campaign, so he ordered his allies in Congress to kill the deal," she claimed.

The so-called border bill was dead on arrival

Despite repeatedly claiming that H.R. 815 was crafted out of a bipartisan effort, nearly every Senate Republican voted to filibuster the proposed legislation in May. Democrats and their allies in the corporate media claimed that GOP lawmakers were prepared to pass the legislation until Trump directed them to do otherwise.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told reporters at the time, "Trump told his MAGA allies to kill it in its tracks so he could exploit the issue on the campaign trail."

"And Senate Republicans blindly and loyally followed suit," he remarked.

Biden went so far as to claim that Trump had "threaten[ed]" and "intimidate[d]" Republican lawmakers to vote against the proposal.

The Democratic Party, and especially the Harris campaign, blamed — and continue to blame — the GOP and Trump for the Biden-Harris administration's alleged inability to address the border crisis that was essentially nonexistent under Trump's presidency.

Despite pointing fault at Republicans in Congress, Biden was the one who took nearly 300 executive actions related to immigration during his first year in office. One of those actions included stopping the construction of Trump's border wall.

In the months following the Senate bill's failure, the Biden-Harris administration hemmed and hawed over whether the president had the "power" to shut down the border.

In a May interview with Univision's Enrique Acevedo, Biden stated, "There's no guarantee that I have that power all by myself without legislation. And some have suggested I should just go ahead and try it. And if I get shut down by the court, I get shut down by the court."

Biden further claimed that he had "done all I can do" to stem the flow of illegal immigrants crossing the southern border, calling on Congress to "give me the power" to do more.

In early June, Biden signed the border executive order 89 FR 48487 - Securing the Border, which mirrored some of the provisions introduced in H.R. 815. It similarly claimed to grant the federal government the authority to shut down the border once the number of encounters reached 2,500 per day for seven consecutive days. However, it carved out exceptions for unaccompanied minors, as well as people with medical emergencies, a "credible fear," and from countries that would not take back deportees. It also did not include illegal immigrants who scheduled an appointment to claim asylum at a port of entry through the administration's CBP One app. In fact, those applying through the application had their entry process effectively expedited.

While the executive action did very little to stop the uptick in immigration, only redirecting it toward one of Biden's many new so-called "legal pathways," the administration has used it as a talking point to claim that it is tough on illegal immigration after all.

'It prioritized funding NGOs, processing, and noncustodial detention over full detention and interior enforcement.'

However, if that were the case, the administration would have encouraged Democratic lawmakers to more carefully consider Sen. Ted Cruz's (R-Texas) Secure the Border Act of 2023, H.R. 2, introduced months before H.R. 815.

In May 2023, Republicans in the House passed the bill in a 219-213 vote, with only two GOP members voting with Democrats against the measure. H.R. 2 would have restarted the construction of Trump's border wall, reinstated the "remain in Mexico" policy, raised asylum standards, criminalized visa overstays, stopped the use of CBP One, and increased the number of Border Patrol officers. It also aimed to remove taxpayer funding from nongovernmental organizations assisting with the trafficking of illegal aliens.

Cruz called the bill "the most comprehensive border security legislation in decades."

He told Blaze News, "The people to blame for our open border are President Biden, Vice President Harris, and Democrats in Congress who support them."

"Kamala Harris was the border czar and opened our border," Cruz continued. "The bill she pushed and is now pushing would have kept the border open, increased funding for sanctuary cities, normalized 1.8 million illegal aliens crossing the border per year, and provided illegal aliens with taxpayer-funded lawyers."

Cruz told Blaze News, "If Democrats were serious about securing the border, they would pass my bill, H.R. 2."

"Harris and Congressional Democrats vociferously and ideologically oppose" the solutions presented in his bill, Cruz said.

"The only way our border will be secured is by electing Donald Trump and voting in Republican control of Congress," he added.

Democrats slammed Cruz's bill for not receiving unanimous Republican backing and lacking bipartisan support, something H.R. 815 also failed to accomplish despite claims otherwise. Six Democrats voted against the Senate bill, causing it to fall short of the 60 votes required to proceed.

On August 14, Congressman Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) posted a "reminder" on social media, stating, "HR2 has been sitting on Schumer's desk for 461 DAYS. It is the ONLY border bill that PASSED. The Senate bill NEVER PASSED."

"Biden-Harris broke our border ON PURPOSE & we're overrun with millions of illegals," Donalds added. "No amount of Democrat gaslighting can change the facts."

John Fabbricatore, a retired Immigration and Customs Enforcement Denver Field Office director and current Republican congressional candidate for Colorado's 6th District, told Blaze News, "The so-called bipartisan border bill was never truly bipartisan, nor was it an effective measure for securing our borders."

"It prioritized funding NGOs, processing, and noncustodial detention over full detention and interior enforcement. Furthermore, it expanded parole, an area already witnessing abuse under the CHNV program," Fabbricatore continued, referring to the Biden-Harris administration's immigration program that allows 30,000 individuals per month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to immigrate to the United States.

"In contrast, the HR2 Secure Border Act was a far superior and more well-rounded package, which focused purely on border security without diverting funds to foreign entities like Ukraine. HR 2 was supported by Republicans but was unfortunately rejected by Democrats in May 2023 before the Senate bill was ever put together," Fabbricatore added.