Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.), the second-ranking Senate GOP leader, told reporters Wednesday that any border security deal with the Biden administration would have to include a cap on how many migrants are paroled into the country after being encountered by law enforcement at the border.
Emerging from a special Senate Republican meeting on the status of the border talks, Thune confirmed that a disagreement over the administration’s authority to release migrants encountered at the border — a practice known as humanitarian parole — is a sticking point in the talks.
“There’s a real strong opinion in our conference that this issue of parole’s got to be dealt with in some way,” Thune said, adding that Democrats “understand now that we’re serious about it.”
“We’ve got to that addressed in some fashion,” he said.
Thune said Republicans are “generally … in the same place” about what to do about paroling migrants and view capping the total number of people released into the country as the best approach.
“There are a couple of ideas out there about how to do deal with it but the one that seems to have a lot of support is some sort of a cap along the lines of what we do with refugees and other categories of people who come into the country,” he said.
Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), the lead Republican negotiator in the border security talks, offered a detailed update to colleagues Wednesday afternoon on the state of the talks and answered their questions.
Senate Republicans are growing increasingly optimistic they’ll have a border security deal with Democrats by next week, but they still have to get the details translated into legislative text.
“It hasn’t been written yet. It’s a complex issue and will have to be digested by everyone once it is in writing,” said Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) after the meeting. “One of the factors here is going to be: What can pass in the House?”
Rubio said it’s not clear whether a bipartisan Senate deal can pass the GOP-controlled House but he said it would give Donald Trump or another future GOP president powerful tools to crack down on illegal migration.
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