The last time the Senate voted on Sen. James Lankford’s (R-OK) border bill, only the three most left-leaning members of the Republican conference voted with Lankford: Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), and Mitt Romney (R-UT). Every other Republican who voted voted against it.
Collins, Murkowski, and Romney are not the future of the Republican Party. If Lankford wants to have a future as a leader of the Republican Party, and he does, he needs to get right on immigration. And Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is apparently going to give him that opportunity.
Schumer believes that by blaming former President Donald Trump for killing bipartisan border reform, Senate Democrats can shift the blame for the “Biden Border Crisis” from President Joe Biden, with whom it belongs, and to Republicans who are blocking allegedly essential border reform. Accordingly, Schumer plans to bring Lankford’s failed border bill back to the Senate floor for another vote.
This puts Lankford in a tough spot. Does he want to be a tool of Biden and Senate Democrats, echoing their completely false claims about the cause of the border crisis and what is needed to fix it, or should he be honest about who caused the border crisis and admit the legislation he agreed to wouldn’t solve the problem?
This shouldn’t be a tough choice.
When the legislation was first released, Lankford urged his colleagues to read it before making up their minds. The problem is, the more Republicans actually read the bill, the more it became apparent Lankford had made a huge mistake.
As I have noted before, Lankford claims his bill would “Detain and Deport” all immigrants who illegally cross the southern border. But if you actually read the legislation, it does the exact opposite: It mandates catch and release for almost all immigrants arrested for illegally crossing the southern border.
Instead of repeating his previous false claims about the bill, Lankford should say he was misled by the lead White House negotiator, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Mayorkas is an immigration attorney by trade and has decades of experience enforcing, litigating, and creating federal immigration law. Lankford has no immigration law experience. Mayorkas has forgotten more immigration law than Lankford will ever know.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Lankford should say he was led to believe that the legislation he signed on to would “Detain and Deport” all immigrants who illegally cross the southern border but that after more careful reading of the actual text, he now understands how it does the exact opposite.
Other senators have rebuilt their careers after immigration missteps. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) is now reportedly on Trump’s vice presidential short list. But he didn’t get there by parroting false Democratic talking points about border security. He got there by becoming a born-again border hawk, a hawk who voted against Lankford’s catch-and-release bill.