Speaker Mike Johnson Shoots Down Lankford’s Senate Immigration Deal

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has thrown cold water on Senate negotiators of a border compromise after details of a draft deal emerged.

“Absolutely not,” Johnson tweeted with a screenshot of reported details.

Absolutely not. pic.twitter.com/tkXma24r8M

— Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) January 13, 2024

Lead Republican Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) worked with his colleagues to craft a border compromise to enable passage of tens of billions of dollars in foreign aid, including to Ukrainians to prolong their war with Russia that has been at a stalemate for months.

According to the Immigration Accountability Project, the proposed Senate deal would:

• Increase green cards by 50,000/year
• Work permits for adult children of H-1B holders
• Immediate work permits to every illegal alien released from custody
• Taxpayer-funded lawyers to certain UACs and mentally incompetent aliens
• Expulsion authority for a limited number of days only if encounters exceed 5K/day over a seven-day period
• Restrict parole for those who enter without authorization between ports of entry

Johnson has told the Senate that the House-passed H.R. 2 border security bill must be the baseline of a deal.

He says that the provisions of the House bill are crafted to work together to fix the problem, and that removal of one or more of the major provisions would render the bill ineffective at stopping the flow of migrants.

“If you don’t end catch and release as a policy, if you don’t reinstitute remain in Mexico, if you only fix asylum or parole and not these other things, then you don’t solve the problem. You don’t stem the flow here,” he told Face the Nation about Senate efforts to pass a watered-down bill with cherry-picked H.R. 2 provisions.

“If it looks like H.R. 2, we’ll talk about it,” he said previously.

Lankford has said it isn’t realistic to expect the Senate or Biden White House to support H.R. 2, despite their hunger to act on the issue as it continues damaging their prospects in November elections.

In December, over over 300,000 migrant encounters at the southern border set a new record, and overwhelmed Democrat officials across the nation have pleaded with Washington to act.

Bradley Jaye is a Capitol Hill Correspondent for Breitbart News. Follow him on X/Twitter at @BradleyAJaye.