By Frank Thorp V, Sahil Kapur, Kate Santaliz and Syedah Asghar -
NBC News
In a surprising turn of events, Senate Republicans threatened Monday to block a major bipartisan package of border security measures and asylum restrictions, just a day after their chief negotiator approved it.
Republican senators emerged from a special closed-door meeting predicting their party will not provide enough votes to advance the package on Wednesday, saying they agreed they need more time to discuss changes to the bill in the form of amendments. .
James Lankford, a Republican senator from Oklahoma and the GOP's chief negotiator in the border talks, told reporters after the meeting: "I predict that the cloture vote will not pass on Wednesday. People are saying, 'I need a lot more time.' to be able to approve this.'"
Republican unrest could be devastating for the package, which House Republican leaders have already said will be "dead on arrival" in the House.
Proponents hoped that strong bipartisan support in the Senate could sway the chamber.
[Senators unveil bipartisan proposal to impose stricter asylum and border security laws]
Donald Trump demands that Republicans sink the agreement they reached with Democrats and that President Joe Biden now supports, while Trump, a probable Republican presidential candidate in 2024, seeks to wield immigration as a political weapon in the fall elections.
The former president lashed out at the bill on social media, calling it "nothing more than a very sophisticated trap to get Republicans to take the blame for what radical left Democrats have done to our border, just in time for our most important elections.
Senate Minority Leader John Thune, a Republican, told reporters that Republicans are concerned that they "don't have enough time" to process the bill.
"I think it's fair to say that everyone thinks that voting on Wednesday would be voting too early," he said.
The 370-page bill, finalized and released Sunday, was drafted with input from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Republican, who advocated for the proposal on the Senate floor Monday, warning of crises on the southern border and internationally.
In addition to the new border provisions, the package includes aid for Ukraine and Israel.
"The time has come for Congress to take additional national security legislative action to address these challenges," he said.
But a few hours later, as Senate Republicans met behind closed doors and opposition continued to grow, McConnell — one of the strongest Republican supporters of aid to Ukraine in Congress — gave his members the green light to oppose the vote. Wednesday's procedure.
McConnell told Republicans that if they have reason to vote against the bill, they can do so, given that talks about amendments and how to proceed are ongoing, a source familiar with the meeting said.
[With a change of tone, Biden promises to close the border if the immigration agreement being negotiated in the Senate is approved]
Democrats were stunned to see Republicans abandon the pact.
"Just flabbergasted. I've never seen anything like it," Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii and a member of Democratic leadership, said in X.
"They literally demanded a specific policy, got it, and then killed it."
Chris Murphy, a senator from Connecticut and chief Democratic negotiator, called the Republicans' attitude toward their own agreement "shameful."
"You told us you wanted a bipartisan border fix. You appointed the Republican negotiator. We reached a deal," he wrote on Decide, please."
The vote scheduled for Wednesday is a procedural vote to move toward debate on the legislation.
That vote, called a cloture motion, needs 60 votes to pass.
If it fails, the bill would be frozen indefinitely until 60 senators agreed to restart its debate in the plenary session.
[Biden and López Obrador talk by phone about migration after accusations against the president of Mexico]
Senate Republicans emerged from Monday's meeting calling the discussion "robust";
At one point, reporters could hear Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., speaking loudly in the room, to which Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, was heard saying, "Time out!"
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, who is an outspoken opponent of the bill, left the meeting saying the room was "not very enthusiastic" about the immigration package.
Sen. John Kennedy, R-Louisiana, said: "It was a debate about provisions, substance, process. Even if I fully understood the bill, and we were going through it line by line, I would not vote for it out of respect for my colleagues, because I sense that many of them are not as advanced as us.
Within minutes of the bill's release, conservative senators and House Republicans began criticizing it.
The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Republican Mike Johnson, and his leadership team issued a joint statement declaring him "DEAD" in the chamber.
Lankford was surprised by the tenor of the GOP opposition.
"Frankly, I was surprised that some people said, 'It's going to take me days and weeks to read the bill,' but within minutes they were tweeting their opposition," he said in an interview Monday.
[The Lower House will vote on a law that only includes aid to Israel, without possible security changes on the border]
Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., wrote in
Kyrsten Sinema, an independent senator from Arizona and co-author of the package, told reporters Monday that there is "a lot of misinformation still circulating about the legislation" and lamented that election-year political issues are driving some opposition.
"We raised the level of asylum. We increased the detention beds so that adults who come alone can be detained while they undergo the asylum interview, and then removed from the country if they cannot provide evidence at the higher level of examination. "Family units are under supervision and have their interview within 90 days. If they cannot provide proof of the higher level within those 90 days, they are quickly expelled from the country."
Lankford, addressing whether the experience makes him hesitant to jump into another deal in the future, said, "I need a nap. So, for me, I'm not interested in getting involved in the next big project."