The NPR Politics Podcast - Border Deal: Action Item Or Campaign Fodder?

Episode Date: January 29, 2024

The border is a hot topic for politicians on both sides of the aisle — and now, on the campaign trail. After months of negotiations, a bipartisan group of senators plan to release details of an immigration deal. Now, lawmakers must decide if they'd rather have the political issue or the policy solution. This episode: senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith, national political correspondent Mara Liasson, and the Texas Newsroom's capitol reporter Sergio Martinez-Beltrán.This podcast was produced by Jeongyoon Han, Casey Morell & Kelli Wessinger. Our editor is Erica Morrison. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Caitlin and Cole and Jasper in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, where we are enjoying our bike ride to school after a week of snowy conditions. This podcast was recorded at 1.33 p.m. Eastern Time on Monday, January 29th. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but we will continue to be grateful to live where we can bike almost all year round. Okay, here's the show. Let's do it. Pretty cute. That was very cute, though I don't believe that their weather is actually good for biking all the time. Don't they have a lot of rain? I think they do, but maybe that doesn't stop them.

I bet that doesn't stop them. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And we are joined by Texas newsroom reporter Sergio Martinez Beltran from Austin, Texas. Sergio, thank you for joining us. So happy to be here with y'all. After months of negotiations, a bipartisan group of senators say they could release language of a deal to secure the U.S.-Mexico border soon. But on the House side, Speaker Mike Johnson says the deal is dead on arrival. It is clear that immigration is a hot presidential campaign issue, with both President Joe Biden and former President Trump staking out positions on this possible deal.

Let's start with President Biden, who said this at a campaign event in South Carolina. That bill with the law today, I'd shut down the border right now and fix it quickly. A bipartisan bill would be good for America and help fix our broken immigration system and allow speedy access for those who deserve to be here. And Congress needs to get it done. Mara, this is pretty strong language coming from President Biden, not the kind of language we're used to hearing. This is the new tough on immigration Biden. And remember, he ran in 2020 in contrast to Trump's border policies. He said he wouldn't separate families, he'd allow asylum seekers to come in. And now, after he has been unable to get the flow of

asylum seekers and illegal crossers at the border down, he now says, as you just heard him say, I'd shut the border down right now if that bill was law. What he means is if the bill was law, it would give him the ability to say after X number of asylum seekers come on a given week, 5,000, whatever it is, he could shut down the asylum processing process for a while. But the reason he's become tougher on the border is because all of a sudden the border has become a top issue, not just for Republicans, not just for southern border state Republican governors, but also for Democratic mayors and governors, because a lot of these asylum seekers are put on buses in Texas or Florida and they are bused north. And this has become a real political problem for him. And he wants this bill to be sent to him, although it doesn't look like it's going to be. Former President Trump also weighed in at a campaign rally in Nevada.

And he seemed to be trying to flex his muscles within the GOP, making it clear that he wants to tank this deal that is being discussed. As the leader of our party, there is zero chance I will support this horrible open borders betrayal of America. It's not going to happen. I noticed that and I'll fight it all the way. I noticed a lot of the senators, a lot of the senators are trying to say respectfully they're blaming it on me. I said, that's OK. Please blame it on me, please, Because they were getting ready to pass a very bad bill. And I'll tell you what, a bad bill is, I'd rather have no bill than a bad bill. He certainly would rather have no bill. He'd rather have a political issue. And what's so interesting about this latest doomed debate about the border, and we've had many, many doomed debates about the border, is how out in the open the internal Republican debate is.

There are senators who have been saying this is the best, most conservative border bill we could imagine. We couldn't even get something this tough if Trump were in the White House. For the very first time in a long time, the Democrats did not insist on doing anything about DREAMers. There's young people brought here illegally as infants or children. Many of them have had some kind of temporary legal status. Democrats dropped that. So this is kind of a conservatives immigration dream bill. But there are a lot of Republicans, including Donald Trump, who would rather have it as an issue because it works so well for them. And it is such a weakness for Biden. And to be clear, we have not seen the

language of this possible bill yet, but it has been negotiated painstakingly between Republicans and Democrats and very likely will include things that Republicans want in terms of border security, toughening border security, but maybe isn't as tough as Republicans would like because Democrats have to agree to it, too. And President Biden has to sign it. Sergio, you are in Texas and you've been reporting on the situation at the border. What is that situation like? Is it a crisis? I mean, if you ask the Republican leaders and lawmakers here in Texas whether it's a crisis or not, they'll say yes. And we're getting to the point that even some democratic lawmakers that represent border communities would say the same thing. They would say that their communities truly are overwhelmed with the influx of undocumented

migrants. And again, these border communities like Eagle Pass are very small communities that don't have the infrastructure, right, to serve such a big influx of migrants and, you know, little things. So we've talked to mayors in other communities that have talked about how they don't even have a bus program, right? They don't have buses to transport people around the community. So they are seeing that it's becoming really hard to handle the situation. Well, it is sort of puzzling. If this is a crisis right now that is getting blaring headlines and all of this concern, then why not try to do something now instead of waiting best case scenario more than a year? A best case scenario more than a year, probably longer, because this is a very powerful issue for Republicans and they'd rather have the political issue than the policy solution. And the Republicans in the Senate who have been negotiating this bill say, we got everything we wanted. If you don't want to

vote for this bill, you're just saying you want the political issue. Here's James Lankford, Republican from Oklahoma. He said this on Fox News Sunday. Republicans four months ago would not give funding for Ukraine, for Israel, and for our southern border because we demanded changes in policy. And now it's interesting, a few months later, when we're finally getting to the end, they're like, oh, just kidding. I actually don't want a change in law because it's a presidential election year. We all have an oath to the Constitution, and we have a commitment to say we're going to do whatever we can to be able to secure the border. Yeah. And there are also, don't forget, a lot of Republicans in the House, about 17 of them, who are in districts that Biden won. They have a migrant problem. They want the migrant problem fixed. And it doesn't look like the House is willing to give them what they need to run for

reelection. Sergio, talk to me a little bit more about Texas lawmakers, members of Congress from both was Republican-led that condemned President Biden's quote, open border policies. And we have a few Democrats from Texas who joined Republicans and voted to support this measure. And we talked to one of the congressmen, Colin Allred, who doesn't represent a border community, but he is running for U.S. Senate. And he did say that he saw his vote as a shout to the world that something needed to change, that he was not supporting the status quo. And so that's why he voted with Republicans on this resolution. And we're seeing more Democrats thinking that way. Well, and that is notable because he is running for Senate. He has not gotten his party's

nomination yet, but he is running for Senate in Texas, hoping to take on Ted Cruz. And there you have a Democrat seeing the politics and saying, yeah, I need to be on the right side of this issue. Right. And I mean, in Texas, Tim, poll after poll shows that Republicans really think that border and immigration is the number one issue affecting the state. But Democrats feel the same way. It usually polls around the number one issue or the second issue for Democrats. So he's recognizing that, hey, if he wants to beat Senator Ted Cruz, he has to talk about immigration in a more open way. And at times, you know, even condemned or throw under the bus his president, President Biden, who is part of his party. All right, we are going to take a quick break. And when we get back,

the fight between the state of Texas and the federal government over the border. And we are back. And Sergio, you've been on the front lines of this border debate and a growing fight between Texas and the federal government over immigration enforcement. So talk us through some of the things that Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican governor there in Texas, has been doing sort of unilaterally to try to restrict the flow of migrants. Last year, Abbott started putting miles of concertina wire along the U.S.-Mexico border in an effort to curb illegal migration. And the razor wires are part of Operation Lone Star, which is Abbott's border security initiative that was launched in 2021.

And, you know, Abbott has done many things with it, including sending Texas National Guardsmen to the border. He's also created a busing program to transport migrants to other states. And his whole thing is that he wants people to see firsthand the number of migrants coming to Texas. And Abbott has also ordered the installation of other barriers besides the concertina wire, like buoys along the Rio Grande Valley, to prevent migrants from crossing. And he's done all of this without the permission of the federal government, despite the fact that the enforcement of immigration laws fall under the

purview of the feds. Right. And now the Supreme Court, the U.S. Supreme Court, has weighed in saying that the Biden administration can cut down the razor wire that Texas has been putting up along the border. So is that happening? How is Abbott responding? A couple of things are happening here in Texas, particularly in the Eagle Pass community. So there's this public park there called Shelby Park, which was used by migrants to cross without authorization. But recently, members of the Texas National Guard took over the park and have blocked Border Patrol agents from processing migrants in that area.

And I say this because the latest U.S. Supreme Court order only talked about the ability of the federal government of cutting the razor wire, which there's a lot of in Shelby Park. But again, it didn't talk about whether the state had to allow federal agents access to the park. Now, the feds have asked the state to relent, but Texas has doubled down. And as of right now, Border Patrol agents are not being allowed into Shelby Park, where again, a lot of the concertina wire is, so they haven't been able to cut much of it. And also, Texas has already said that they'll put up more barriers along the border. Just to explain to our listeners,

the reason why this very conservative Supreme Court seemed to be siding with Biden here is because the border is a presidential executive power function. It's about the borders of the entire country. It's a federal thing. It's not something that's run state by state. Sergio, I do want to ask, I don't know exactly what Governor Abbott's goal is, but is it working? That's a good question. You know, if you asked Republicans, they say it would. If you asked immigration rights advocates, they say it would not. But I think Governor Abbott has been effective at, if anything, right, unknowing and bothering other people, particularly Democratic governors.

Right. And I say this because with the busing program where, again, he's busing and sending migrants to other cities across the country, the mayors and the governors there have realized that they don't have the infrastructure to help and serve the migrants. And this has created some pressure in their communities. And they, the Democrats, have now been putting some pressure on President Biden. And again, that's Abbott's whole point. He's saying that if my communities in Texas, in the border, cannot handle this, then you should feel how we are feeling down here. Now, in terms of money, right, a lot of this program, Operation Lone Star, comes with a lot of money. I mean, the state has spent over $4 billion

on this initiative. And what's happening is that at the end of the day, people are still crossing, right? But at times, what's happening is that they're getting hurt with the concertina wire and all the other barriers and again despite having all these barriers like the buoys the concertina wire and whatnot people are still crossing in fact in december the country saw a record number of what the federal government calls encounters with illegal migrants in the southwest border and you know we've also seen that under operation lone star u.s citizens have been accidentally detained because of the color of their skin or because they've been suspected of being in the country illegally.

So Operation Lone Star as a whole hasn't done much to deter migrants from crossing, but it has created big political waves. You could argue that's what its purpose was. I mean, we started off this whole thing with Governor DeSantis sending a busload of asylum seekers to Martha's Vineyard to own the libs. Then Abbott kind of refined it. And all of a sudden, New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker are, you know, yelling about the Biden administration's failure to do something about immigration. So politically, you'd have to give this one to the Republicans. Well, and certainly President Biden is under a huge amount of pressure. And you can tell because his rhetoric has changed.

No doubt. This is not 2020 Joe Biden. This is 2024 Joe Biden facing reelection and owning this issue. When he was running against Trump in 2020, it was all about the contrast to Trump's family separation policies. But now it's on him. He has to make sure that the border is functioning. You know, it is a lot easier, going back to this deal that is being discussed that we haven't seen the language for yet, it is a lot easier to kill legislation than it is to pass it.

Especially when you have divided government. Yes, absolutely. And especially when you need 60 votes in the Senate. We've seen that over and over again. And Kevin McCarthy lost his job partially because he passed government funding bills with Democratic votes because he had to. He didn't have a big enough majority to do it himself. So this is a Republican Party that considers bipartisanship and negotiating across the aisle as a dirty word. And they will punish people who do it. And President Biden is a president who thrives on bipartisan deals. And has passed a whole lot of bipartisan things, much to a lot of people's surprise. But on this one, I don't think that he can heave this over the finish line. Sergio, I want to close this out by having you look in a crystal ball, one that may be well-informed by the past. Flows of migrants tend to move in cycles, tend to change with the seasons. So what does this coming year look like? What might we expect? And

how does that match up with the political calendar, I guess? Yeah, I mean, you're right. It flows with the seasons. And historically, we've seen an increase in crossings during the winter months, like December, January, February, even March. So I would be very curious to see next month, what's the number of crossings have dropped. But for the last few years, and I think about 2021, for example, I think 2021 showed that those traditional trends are not necessarily a thing anymore. And that is because in 2021, there was back then a record number of crossings in July, which again, that would be a month where we would not see as many migrants crossing. So I think this month of January would be interesting to see, you know, if we see an increase in numbers or even a drop, who knows. But I think it's fair to say that we could expect more people trying to come into the country.

And this fight between the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, and President Biden and his administration increased as well as we see an increase in numbers. That is it for today. Sergio, thank you so much for sharing your reporting. You're welcome. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.