Developments
With Congress back in session today, we continue to await legislative language from Senate negotiators who have been working since November on a deal that might restrict access to asylum at the border, a Republican demand for allowing a package of Ukraine aid and other spending priorities to move forward.
- Maria Guerrero, “Lawmakers Grapple With Border Security Bill, Details to Be Released This Week” (NBC Dallas-Fort Worth, January 29, 2024).
- Colleen Long, “President Biden Has Said He’d Shut the Us-Mexico Border if Given the Ability. What Does That Mean?” (Associated Press, Associated Press, January 29, 2024).
- “Editorial: Do Republicans Want to Secure the Border — or Help Trump’s Presidential Campaign?” (The Los Angeles Times, January 29, 2024).
- Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas), “A Delay of Border Bill in Congress Is a Threat to National Security” (The Dallas Morning News, January 30, 2024).
Prospects for the deal’s passage in the Republican-majority House of Representatives remain poor. “Any border ‘shutdown’ authority that ALLOWS even one illegal crossing is a non-starter. Thousands each day is outrageous. The number must be ZERO,” tweeted Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana). (The number has never been close to zero.)
“Thousands each day” refers to an apparent agreement among Senate negotiators to start expelling asylum seekers if the daily average of migrant apprehensions at the border rises above 5,000.
- “Speaker Mike Johnson @Speakerjohnson on Twitter” (Twitter, January 29, 2024).
- Amber Phillips, “Will Trump Be Able to Kill a Bipartisan Immigration Deal?” (The Washington Post, January 29, 2024).
- Greg Sargent, “GOP Senator Reveals the Sick Truth About the Trump-Maga Border Scam” (The New Republic, January 29, 2024).
- Arthur Delaney, Daniel Marans, Igor Bobic, Kevin Robillard, “Republicans Who Screamed About a Crisis on the Border Oppose a Plan to Fix It” (The Huffington Post, January 29, 2024).
- Alisa Reznick, “Biden: Senate Negotiations Include a New Executive Authority to ‘Shut Down’ the Border” (Fronteras Desk, January 29, 2024).
The Oklahoma Republican Party issued a statement clarifying that it did not, in fact, vote to censure Senate Republicans’ chief negotiator, Sen. James Lankford, for his talks with Democrats, as was reported over the weekend.
- “Carmen Forman @Carmenmforman on Twitter” (Twitter, January 29, 2024).
- Rick Maranon, “Sen. Lankford Working on Immigration Bill Trump Wants Republican House to Kill” (FOX 23 (Tulsa Oklahoma), January 29, 2024).
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador responded to President Joe Biden’s January 27 pledge to “shut down the border right now” (an apparent reference to a Title 42-style expulsion authority that is part of the Senate agreement), calling it “a very demagogic position.”
- Dalila Escobar, “AMLO Considera Demagogica la Postura de Joe Biden de Cerrar la Frontera” (Proceso (Mexico), January 29, 2024).
- Emma Colton, “‘Don’t Know’ What Shutting Down the Border Means ‘Exactly,’ White House Spokeswoman Says” (Fox News, January 29, 2024).
The House Homeland Security Committee will meet today to mark up articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
- Mychael Schnell, “House Panel to Take Up Mayorkas Impeachment as Border Talks Face Conservative Backlash” (The Hill, January 29, 2024).
- Anna Giaritelli, “Mccaul: Dhs Secretary Mayorkas ‘Needs to Pay for His Sins’” (The Washington Examiner, January 29, 2024).
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R) said that his state is putting up concertina wire “everywhere we can… If they cut it, we will replace it.” The Hill reported, “Patrick threatened a ‘confrontation’ with state authorities if the Biden administration sent Border Patrol to remove barriers.”
- Nick Robertson, “Lt. Gov.: Texas ‘Will Not Stop’ Putting Up Razor Wire on Border After Supreme Court Ruling” (The Hill, January 29, 2024).
Twenty-six Republican state attorneys-general, including those from “purple” states like New Hampshire and Virginia, signed a statement backing Texas’s border security efforts and confrontation with federal authorities, citing the state’s “duty to defend against invasion.”
- “Supporting Texas’s Efforts to Secure the Border” (Republican state attorneys-general, Texas Attorney-General, January 29, 2024).
A state records request revealed that Texas’s state government paid $135,000, or $1,100 per passenger, to fly 120 migrants on a chartered plane from El Paso to Chicago in December.
- “Ryan Chandler @Ryanchandlertv on Twitter” (Twitter, January 29, 2024).
A migrant “caravan” that started near the Mexico-Guatemala border with about 6,000 people at Christmas is now 400 people, walking through Mexico’s southern state of Veracruz.
- Isabel Zamudio, “Caravana ‘Exodo de la Pobreza’ Llego a Yanga, Veracruz, para Descansar” (Milenio (Mexico), January 29, 2024).
A Republican House Foreign Affairs Committee aide who had accompanied a recent four-person delegation to Mexico “said Mexican officials were ‘very keen’ about touting their work removing Venezuelans,” the Washington Examiner reported.
- Anna Giaritelli, “Mexico ‘Increasingly Concerned That They’re Getting Invaded’ by World’s Immigrants: Mccaul” (The Washington Examiner, January 29, 2024).
Analyses and Feature Stories
“Perhaps it’s chaos, not immigration per se, that upsets voters, and Mr. Biden can curb the chaos by letting more immigrants come to the United States legally,” wrote the Cato Institute’s David Bier at the New York Times. In the increasingly likely event that Congress fails to reach a border deal, Bier suggests that Biden expand use of humanitarian parole authority.
- David J. Bier, “What Biden Can Do After Another Failed Border Deal” (Cato Institute, The New York Times, January 30, 2024).
U.S. media have published a series of analyses from legal scholars about the “extremely dangerous” constitutional implications of Texas’s challenge to federal authority to enforce immigration policy at the border, especially its exclusion of Border Patrol from part of the border in Eagle Pass.
- Adam Serwer, “The Supreme Court Has Itself to Blame for Texas Defying Its Orders” (The Atlantic, January 29, 2024).
- Erwin Chemerinsky, “Texas Gov. Greg Abbott Is Defying a U.S. Supreme Court Order. That’s Frightening” (UC Berkeley School of Law, The Los Angeles Times, January 29, 2024).
- Judd Legum, “Texas’ Standoff With the Border Patrol Is a Constitutional Powder Keg” (Mother Jones, January 29, 2024).
- Frank O. Bowman Iii, “Immigration Is Not an “Invasion” Under the Constitution” (University of Missouri, Just Security, January 29, 2024).
Honduran authorities registered 545,043 citizens of other countries (not counting neighboring Nicaragua) transiting its territory irregularly in 2023. UNHCR estimated “that more than 850,000 people transited Honduras” last year when including those whom the government did not count.
- “Honduras – Operational Update – December 2023” (UN Refugee Agency, January 29, 2024).
On the Right
- Charles Creitz, “Ex-Fbi Official Warns Biden’s Open Border Could Lead to 10/7 Israel-Style Attack: ‘Greatest Risk in Lifetime’” (Fox News, January 29, 2024).
- Rep. Lance Gooden (R-Texas), “Governor Greg Abbott Is Right” (The American Conservative, January 30, 2024).