The controversial border bill underway in the U.S. Senate has faced extreme scrutiny in recent days, ultimately proving some of the worst fears about the bill to be true despite claims to the contrary by its proponents.
As reported by Breitbart, Senator James Lankford (R-Okla.), the bill’s main Republican sponsor, said in an interview that “right now, there’s Internet rumors,” and “it’s all that people are running. It would be absolutely absurd for me to agree to 5,000 people a day.”
“This is not — this is not someone standing at the border with a little clicker and saying, I’m going to let one more in, we’re at 4,999, and then it has to stop,” Lankford continued. “It is a shutdown of the border and everyone actually gets turned around.”
Another Republican who supports the bill, Senator Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), claimed without evidence that criticism of the bill was being spread by Russia.
“I suspect that a lot of the internet rumors are very well coming from overseas,” said Rounds, “where they would love to see this shut down because some people would rather not see funding for Ukraine.”
But in fact, analysis of the bill proves that not only would it allow 5,000 illegal aliens to continue crossing the border per day, it would actually allow up to 8,500 illegals per day before the Secretary of Homeland Security would be required to declare an emergency.
According to the bill’s text, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) “shall activate the border emergency authority if during a period of seven consecutive calendar days, there is an average of 5,000 or more aliens who are encountered each day; or on any 1 calendar day, a combined total of 8,500 or more aliens are encountered.”
The bill is also facing backlash for the broad authority that it grants solely to the DHS Secretary, especially given that the current Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, is facing impeachment in the House of Representatives sometime this week as a result of his failure to secure the southern border.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) confirmed in a post on X that the Senate immigration bill is “dead on arrival” if it passes the Senate and goes to the House.