Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) voiced optimism on Tuesday that the Senate can reach a deal on border security even as he acknowledged that talks had stalled.
A bipartisan working group negotiating changes to immigration law hoped to announce a deal as senators returned from the Christmas recess, yet Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), the lead Republican negotiator, told reporters on Monday evening there were “too many unresolved parts” for an agreement to materialize this week.
The pessimistic note came only hours after Schumer declared from the Senate floor that they had made “more progress in the past couple of days on the border than we have in the past few weeks.”
The mixed messages — Lankford, too, had voiced optimism a deal was near on Sunday — encapsulate the state of negotiations. “Progress” has been the byword, but key sticking points, most notably on the issue of humanitarian parole, stand in the way of a framework agreement.
Schumer has conceded for weeks that “getting over the finish line” would be difficult. But his Tuesday remarks served to rebut fresh skepticism at whether the two sides can reach a deal at all.
“The key word in these negotiations has been persistence — persistence — and I remain hopeful that we’re going to get something meaningful done,” Schumer said from the floor.
“At times, progress has been slow, and sometimes, progress has been immensely encouraging,” he added. “But either way, the important part is we’re making progress, and we are closer now than we have ever been to getting an agreement.”
The stakes could not be higher. A deal on the border, demanded by Republicans in exchange for tens of billions in Ukraine aid, comes at a perilous time for the Eastern European ally. The White House has warned that its existing funding has run out.
What’s more, the battle over border security has become tangled up with a Jan. 19 deadline to fund the government. House conservatives have threatened a government shutdown without significant border reforms.
This is not the first time Senate border talks have stalled. The working group had initially marked the Christmas recess as a soft deadline to reach a compromise. But that date came and went without a deal, despite Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) forcing the chamber to stay in session an extra week.
Lankford will brief Republicans on the state of talks Wednesday after Senate conservatives, skeptical of the emerging border compromise, demanded a special conference meeting.
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If an agreement is eventually reached, leadership will have to overcome more than opposition from Senate conservatives. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), under pressure to reject anything short of H.R. 2, the House’s flagship border security bill, has not said whether he would take up a Senate deal.
The White House has been negotiating directly with the working group, meaning any compromise would likely have the blessing of President Joe Biden, who is himself facing pressure from his left flank. The president has resisted changes to parole, a tool the administration has used to admit hundreds of thousands of immigrants, though tighter asylum requirements would be part of any deal.
