A Senate immigration deal from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and James Lankford (R-OK) would allow up to 35,000 illegal aliens to arrive at the United States-Mexico border every week before triggering border controls.
According to details reported by Adam Shaw at Fox News the deal would allow up to 5,000 illegal aliens to be encountered every day over a 7-day period — or about 150,000 a month — before the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) would have to use border controls to quickly remove illegal aliens.
The border controls would be similar to those of Title 42, the public health authority used by former President Donald Trump to stem illegal immigration and which President Joe Biden ended. Title 42 allows DHS to quickly apprehend and remove illegal aliens after they arrive at the border.
The deal would also preserve Biden’s expansive catch and release network, whereby parole has been used to admit millions of illegal aliens into American communities.
Shaw reports of the deal:
Daily encounters between 4,000 and 5,000 would allow for discretionary expulsions, and any single day where there were over 8,000 encounters, expulsions would be mandated even if the 7-day average was lower. Those expulsions would also be exempted from judicial review. [Emphasis added]
The use of humanitarian parole at the border by the administration would also be restricted, but migrants could still be paroled in if they cite humanitarian reasons. Those restrictions are not expected to include parole programs in which migrants are flown in, such as those for Afghans and Ukrainians, as well as the Cuban Haitian, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan (CHNV) parole program — which allows 30,000 migrants to fly in to be paroled each month, as part of the administration’s “expanded lawful pathways.” [Emphasis added]
While Lankford and Schumer continue negotiating the deal, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has said he will oppose the effort, as well as several Senate Republicans, including Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), J.D. Vance (R-OH), Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Josh Hawley (R-MO).
As Breitbart News reported, the deal would, among other things:
- Increase overall legal immigration to the United States
- Give work permits to the adult children of H-1B visa-holders
- Expedited work permits for illegal aliens released from federal custody
- Taxpayer-funded lawyers to certain Unaccompanied Alien Children (UACs) and mentally incompetent illegal aliens
Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has privately lobbied Senate Republicans to back the Schumer-Lankford deal. Blackburn, along with others, has said she will not support a deal that seeks to “make illegal immigration legal.”
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at
