Senate releases $118 billion package addressing southern border, aid for Ukraine and Israel

WASHINGTON – Lawmakers have revealed a $118 billion package that includes a long-awaited bipartisan deal to address the migrant crisis at the southern border and new aid for Ukraine, Israel and other U.S. allies, embarking on a challenging path forward in the House, where Republican leadership quickly panned it.

Reports about the agreement Sunday have swirled for months, and the text of the bill being released will allow leaders – including those Republicans who have already sworn off the proposal – to evaluate the legislation for themselves.

The 370-page bill includes the supplemental aid package requested by President Joe Biden for foreign conflicts, which would appropriate $60 billion for Ukraine, $14 billion for Israel and $10 billion for humanitarian aid, including in Gaza.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said he plans to begin the process of considering the legislation this week as "the overwhelming majority of senators want to get this done." But the agreement has already faced sharp criticism from former President Donald Trump and other GOP leaders, and its odds of passing in Congress aren't clear.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said Sunday evening that the bill is "even worse than expected" and that it will be "dead on arrival" if it reached the House. Even some Republican senators immediately slammed it: Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, said, "I cannot understand how any Republican would think this was a good idea."

In a call with reporters, Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., urged his colleagues to consider it before passing judgment. "Why don't we actually work through the process to see what (lawmakers) actually step out and say they do support this?" he said.

In a statement Sunday night, Biden said that the proposal is the "toughest and fairest set of border reforms in decades" and that he strongly supports it. Schumer called it a "monumental step," and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said it includes "direct and immediate solutions" and called upon the Senate to "carefully consider the opportunity in front of us and prepare to act."

As Americans on both sides of the aisle call on lawmakers to compromise on solutions for the southern border, here's what you need to know about the Senate's deal.

What's in the Senate's border agreement?

The proposal would expand detention capacity and make it harder for people to qualify for asylum but would allow migrants who can claim credible fear to stay in the country and work.

It includes about $20 billion in additional funding to expand the Department of Homeland Security's ability to catch, process, house and transport migrants and to catch people smuggling fentanyl and other narcotics across the border. The plan also makes it easier for multiple DHS agencies to hire additional employees.

The legislation would end a practice known as "catch and release," in which migrants caught crossing the border illegally are released into the United States while they wait for the government to process their asylum application. Instead, they would be detained while their claims are evaluated. It would also create a new, voluntary program for migrants to fly back to their home countries on commercial airlines paid for by the U.S. government.

The deal would expand the number of green-card-eligible visas every year for the next five years and guarantee that children of H1-B visa holders remain eligible for green cards once they turn 21. It includes a pathway to citizenship for Afghans who left their country after the Taliban took over – a version of the Afghan Adjustment Act.

Perhaps the most controversial element of the bill is a three-year policy to shut down the processing of asylum applications from people who crossed illegally if the number of expulsions and apprehensions of migrants reaches a weeklong average of 4,000. It would create a mandated shutdown after a weeklong average of 5,000 or more.

There were 302,034 encounters at the southern border in December, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection – an average of 9,743 a day.

During the time the border is shut down, migrants caught crossing illegally would be immediately deported. The process would still allow the processing of asylum claims from people who try to enter at official ports of entry. The border would also reopen after illegal border crossings slow to 75% of that trigger number, or after 270 days have passed in the first year, 225 days in the next, and 180 days in the third year.

"That'll be one that we'll have to talk about," Sen. John Lankford, R-Okla., the lead GOP negotiator on the bill, told reporters Thursday on what element of the deal he expects to receive the most criticism.

"The process is really set up to be able to process more people faster, make decisions faster, deport faster," he said. "But when the system gets overwhelmed, everyone gets deported until we get caught up."

Is the southern border secure? 'No, it's not,' President Biden says

Opposition from the House GOP – and Hispanic lawmakers

Negotiators have been debating the contents of the package for months. Originally, Republicans demanded border security legislation in exchange for their support for additional aid for Ukraine, as GOP lawmakers have split on providing additional U.S. assistance to the war-torn country.

But as the 2024 election cycle picked up speed, Trump began putting pressure on Johnson and other Republicans in Congress to reject the deal. Even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. – no friend of Trump's – reportedly acknowledged that the former president planned to make border security a centerpiece of his 2024 campaign.

"We don’t want to do anything to undermine him," McConnell told his fellow Republican senators at a closed-door lunch, according to reporting by Punchbowl, though he clarified in a meeting later that he's not backing away from border legislation.

Despite facing pushback from within his party, Biden has ramped up his support for the package in response. He vowed to take immediate action to "shut down" the southern border if Congress approves the package, which he said lawmakers would pass "if they're serious about the border crisis."

Johnson has told fellow Republicans in the House that the package is "dead on arrival." He has repeatedly said Biden could stop unauthorized migration without Congress' help, though analysts say he probably would need additional powers to do so. The Louisiana lawmaker has also called on his colleagues in the upper chamber to take up the House's hard-line border bill, known as H.R. 2, which received no Democratic support.

But it's not just House Republicans who oppose the Senate proposal: The Congressional Hispanic Caucus has slammed Biden's support for the package and argued further reform is needed to provide a safe, legal pathway to citizenship for migrants.

"I disagree with President Biden's statement that the proposed policies in the reported Senate Deal are 'fair' or that it will fix our problems on the southern border," the caucus's chair, Rep. Nanette Barragán, D-Calif., said in a statement Thursday.

She said the deal could "make matters worse" and "spur more chaos" without creating long-term solutions: "I’m afraid the current Senate deal being reported, if passed, would set back real comprehensive immigration reform for 10 to fifteen years."

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Senators released the long-awaited border deal. Here's what it means.