Congress appears no closer to a deal ahead of a critical week for negotiations over tying immigration and border policy changes to the emergency aid package that will provide funding for Ukraine and Israel before lawmakers leave town for the holidays.
Republican Sen. James Lankford and Democrat Sen. Chris Murphy, who are leading the immigration and border negotiations, said in separate interviews on Sunday that talks are ongoing between the two sides.
“We are still in the room trying to deal with Republican demands,” Murphy said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “We’re not going to put Donald Trump’s immigration policies into statute. … It would be bad for the country. But, we do need to do something to try and resolve this crisis at the border.”
Casting this point in negotiations as “one of the most dangerous moments” in American history, Murphy warned in stark terms about the national security implications of not reaching a deal.
“Vladimir Putin is delighting right now in Republicans’ insistence that we get a deal on immigration reform, and if we don’t, then they are going to allow Vladimir Putin to march into Ukraine and perhaps into Europe,” he said on NBC.
President Joe Biden sent a clear message to lawmakers Congress last week that he’s open to striking a compromise with Republicans on border security. While lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have expressed an openness to reaching a deal, the two sides still seem no closer to doing so. With House Republicans demanding that the Senate-negotiated deal stick as close as possible to the House-passed border bill, HR 2, many Democrats have said that it’s a nonstarter.
But Lankford, who has remained upbeat throughout the talks, expressed optimism that the negotiators have come a long way from when they started, even as they are mired in a political “push and…
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