Rubio, Scott oppose immigration bill as Trump lords over legislation

Editor's note: This story has been updated to remove analysis from a report by the National Immigration Law Center from 2012/2013 on an unrelated bill.

Florida's two Republican U.S. senators on Wednesday, Feb. 7 helped sink legislation to secure the southern border and provide funding for Ukraine, which is enmeshed in a ferocious fight against a Russian invasion, and Israel, still in a brutal battle with the Hamas terrorist organization.

Their opposition was not a surprise. On Sunday evening, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that the “border deal” was an "easy NO" vote for him. He added: "It reads like a parody of an actual border security bill."

U.S. Sen. Rick Scott on Tuesday, Feb. 6 joined other Senate Republicans, including Ted Cruz of Texas, in a news conference in which the junior senator from Florida ripped the bill and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

“It was a TOTAL FAILURE of Mitch McConnell to abandon the voters by keeping nearly every member of the Senate GOP Conference in the dark to craft an immigration bill falsely labeled as a border security bill," Scott said in a statement. "I want a secure border, and so do people in my state of Florida. That’s not what this bill does."

Both Rubio and Scott have endorsed former President Donald Trump, arguably the measure's most vocal critic.

Republican Senate infighting eclipsed by disaster for House Republicans

The infighting among Republicans in the U.S. Senate — including the castigation of conservative U.S. Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma — was only superseded on Tuesday evening by a disastrous pair of votes in the GOP-led U.S. House.

House Speaker Mike Johnson suffered a humiliating defeat when members of his own party voted no in defeating the high-profile impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Another vote to supply Israel with $17.6 billion in aid also failed, despite drawing almost four dozen Democrats, when more than a dozen Republicans said no.

One of the Democrats voting in favor of the assistance was U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel of West Palm Beach.

“On October 7th, Hamas terrorists brutally murdered, kidnapped, tortured, and raped Israelis, taking 240 hostages — many of whom remain in dark tunnels, being starved and abused,” Frankel wrote in a statement. “Emergency funding is needed to protect both Israel and U.S. military personnel from Iran's proxies. I will continue to work with like-minded colleagues to move this forward and bring the hostages home.”

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The so-called "border deal" was a 370-page, $118 billion measure. It sought to address the immigrant crisis at the southern border and beyond, while also supplying $60 billion for Ukraine, $14 billion for Israel plus another $10 billion for humanitarian aid, including for Gaza.

One of its key proponents was Lankford, a conservative who Republicans in Oklahoma have now censured for negotiating the legislation. President Joe Biden said this weekend the proposal is the "toughest and fairest set of border reforms in decades."

The legislation was endorsed by the National Border Patrol Council, a union representing federal border agents, which has previously backed Trump and often taken hardline stances on immigration issues.

On Feb. 4, the legislation was harshly criticized by the National Immigration Law Center.

“This bill is not worth the incredible price it would exact — more families separated, more children detained, and more people sent back to face persecution, torture, and even death," said Kica Matos, president of the National Immigration Law Center, in a statement. "Instead of enacting draconian policies that create more chaos, we urge the White House and Senate Democrats to change course, reject this framework, and recommit to building an orderly, humane, and functioning immigration system.”

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Nonetheless, the GOP delegation on Capitol Hill has fractured, largely because the leader of the party, Trump, opposed the law.

"All a president has to do is say, 'Close the border,' and the border will be closed," Trump wrote on Truth Social on Tuesday. "A costly new bill is not necessary."

He added that legislation was "nothing more than a highly sophisticated trap for Republicans to assume the blame on what the Radical Left Democrats have done to our Border" ahead of the 2024 election. He warned: "Don’t fall for it!!!"

However, Democrats said Trump opposed the legislation simply because he did not want Biden to notch yet another landmark legislative win, and especially not in an election year in which Trump is counting on campaigning on the border crisis.

On Wednesday, the Biden-Harris 2024 campaign issued a statement saying Trump again "chose chaos" in regard to the border and immigration.

“Donald Trump always puts himself and his dangerous pursuit of power first — even if it means defunding the Border Patrol," the statement said. "Donald Trump’s role is clear as day: He is personally standing in the way of giving Border Patrol the resources it needs to stop the flow of fentanyl and secure the border.

While in Broward County late last month, the second-highest-ranking in Democrat in the U.S. House said Trump was playing politics with the border.

"What he doesn't want to do is to let the president also be successful on delivering on immigration and border security," said U.S. Rep. Katherine Clark, a Massachusetts Democrat. "And he will choose (to block that) to influence the Republicans in the House to reject any compromise in order to keep the issue (alive)."

Scott is up for re-election this year. The leading Democrat in the race, former Miami area Congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, slammed Scott for his opposition to the bill on Tuesday, Feb. 7.

"Obviously, he's playing games and he's not serious about finding solutions for our border. I support the bill. It's not perfect," she said during a speaking engagement in Palm Beach County. "There's a lot more that I would like to include, including providing a legal pathway for our Dreamers who have been living here their entire lives. They deserve a legal pathway that should be included in the bill."

Rubio, who won a third term in 2022, has been burned by the immigration issue in the past.

Rubio won election to the U.S. Senate in 2010 during a campaign in which he took a tough stance on immigration policy. In 2013, however, Rubio was among a group of Senate insiders tailoring a compromise immigration reform package.

"When our economy needs foreign workers to fill labor shortages, our modernized system will ensure that future flow of workers is manageable, traceable, fair to American workers and in line with our economy's needs," Rubio said at the time.

That sparked an avalanche of criticism from the growing immigration hardliners in the GOP. The turnabout proved costly to Rubio when he sought the 2016 presidential nomination against Trump, who by then had made building a wall on the southern border an oft-repeated campaign talking point.

Palm Beach Post reporter Stephany Matat contributed to this story.

Antonio Fins is a politics and business editor at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at [email protected]. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Florida's senators Marco Rubio, Rick Scott oppose immigration bill