Is a Border Deal in Congress on the Horizon?

For the last few days, there have been rumblings that Congress may reach a border deal.  NBC News reports that negotiations in the U.S. Senate to toughen the immigration and asylum laws have moved to working with key senators to finalize the funding provisions in the deal. “The immigration group is now working with the Senate Appropriations Committee on how to craft the funding language to match the policy changes the negotiators have largely agreed to.”

“We’re at the point of drafting and finalizing text. We don’t have an enormous amount of work left to do,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., the chief Democratic negotiator, said yesterday.  “You can’t just change policy,” Murphy said. “You’ve also got to fund the policy.”

The lead negotiators are Senators Murphy, Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), and James Lankford (R-Okla.,).   

The devil will, as they say, be in the details.  According to Karoun Demerjian of the New York Times, “[m]uch of the recent haggling over the emerging agreement — and a point of contention for its critics — has been about how to limit the number of people who are granted parole, a status that allows migrants without visas to live and work in the United States temporarily.”

KJ