The Republican Party has made immigration the main argument to oust Joe Biden from the White House. During his tenure, the Border Patrol has detained a record number of migrants each year: 1.73 million in 2021, 2.37 million in 2022 and 2.47 million in 2023, according to data from the Department of Homeland Security. Based on these figures, which do not represent the number of real migrants but the times they have been intercepted, the extreme right has managed to establish the idea that the president is allowing an "invasion" in this country built, precisely, by migrants.
However, while an immigration pact between Democrats and Republicans is brewing in Congress, one of the strictest and most conservative in history, Donald Trump has emerged as a baron of his party to blow it up. The former president and probable Republican candidate for the White House has not read the text of the legislative proposal, as it does not yet exist. But he dares to criticize him the most: "As the leader of our party, there is zero chance that I will support this horrible betrayal of open borders to the United States," he said at a campaign event in Las Vegas, in which he described him as "soft".
Senator Chuck Schumer, leader of the Democrats in the Senate, has announced that the legislative proposal will be ready for a vote next week. It is expected to include extraordinary powers for the president to completely close the border when it is overcrowded, end the practice of releasing migrants detained after crossing into the US illegally and make the country's asylum system more restrictive.
They are a series of measures that the Republican Party has been supporting for some time, but they have a problem: we are in an election year. Trump is not going to allow Democrats to take credit for passing one of the most restrictive laws in immigration policy in history. One of the pillars of his campaign is that the entry of "rapists", "terrorists" and "drug traffickers" into the country must be stopped: a rhetoric that he already used in 2016 to win the elections and that he has redoubled with an eye on the November elections.
"They are using this horrible Senate bill to put the border disaster on the shoulders of the Republicans," argues the Republican leader, since his desire is to continue holding Democrats responsible for the increase in migrants. However, this increase is not due so much to the actions of the Biden government – which has not, in essence, changed Trump's immigration policy – as to the situations of poverty, violence, climate change and political persecution from which they are fleeing. in origin. Specifically, the data indicate that the number of migrants from Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Haiti has skyrocketed.
Biden sent an emergency request to Congress for $106 billion in October, which included $61 billion in additional assistance to Ukraine and $14 billion for Israel. But Republicans, reluctant to keep the flow of money to kyiv open after months of battlefield stalemate with Russia, conditioned their approval on a law to secure the border with Mexico, even though it is unrelated. some.
After three months of negotiation and concessions, Democrats and Republicans are close to an agreement, but Trump is using his growing influence in Congress to fail its approval. The magnate has the clear support of 137 of the 219 Republican legislators in the House of Representatives and 31 of 49 in the Senate. The law is expected to pass the Democratic-dominated Upper House, but the Republican majority in the Lower House is set to thwart it.
The president of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, was elected in October after the boycott – also promoted by Trump – of the previous speaker, Republican Kevin McCarthy. After months confident of reaching an immigration pact, in January he changed his speech, after the former president's rejection: "If the rumors about the content of the proposal are true, he will have died as soon as he arrives at the House," he said last week. in a letter addressed to Republican lawmakers.
But not all members of his party agree with Trump's support. Like Dan Crenshaw, a congressman from Texas, who denounced on Thursday that his colleagues "are desperately trying to sabotage the agreement." "They're making it seem like the rest of us are against the bill. But that's not true," he added, "I want to secure the border — that's what I told my voters I would do."
Immigration has become the second concern of Americans, according to the latest survey published by Reuters this Wednesday. 17% of those surveyed responded that it will be their priority when deciding to vote in the presidential elections, a sharp increase compared to the 11% that was registered in December. This explains the political burden of this immigration pact, which has become an extension of the battle between Biden and Trump to reach the White House.
It also explains the impeachment process that the Republicans approved on Wednesday in a committee of the Lower House against Alejandro Mayorkas, the Secretary of Homeland Security, whom they accuse of having endangered the country's national security with the entry of undocumented migrants. A process that will also be put to a vote next week, although it will be rejected by the Democratic majority in the Senate if it finally prospers in the House of Representatives.
