Johnson pushes Biden to take executive action on border security

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Mike Johnson urged President Joe Biden to overhaul federal border control policies and return to Trump-era asylum standards in a letter sent Thursday.

The call comes as the White House, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and a bipartisan group of senators have been negotiating for weeks to strike a deal on border security changes, which Republicans have said they'll need in exchange for additional aid to Ukraine. The Senate adjourned for the year Wednesday with no deal in hand.

"The wide-open border has caused unspeakable human tragedy for migrants and certainly for our own citizens," Johnson wrote. "All of this is the direct result of your administration's policies."

He asked Biden to take executive actions to end a policy that allows migrants to be released on "parole" without court dates, to renew construction of the border wall, to "turn back or detain" all undocumented immigrants between ports of entry, and to work with Mexico to restart a program that keeps asylum seekers in that country while they await processing in the U.S.

"The crisis at our southern border has deteriorated to such an extent that significant action can wait no longer. It must start now, and it must start with you," Johnson wrote.

White House spokesperson Angelo Fernandez in a statement Thursday argued House Republicans did not approve funds for additional border agents in 2022 and 2023, and they haven't supported Biden's supplemental funding request, which included $13.6 billion for border security in addition to funding for Ukraine and Israel.

"The President and his team are working to find a bipartisan agreement that will make a real difference at the border," he said. "If Speaker Johnson and House Republicans want to real solutions, they should provide DHS the resources it needs – not seek to defund it."

Biden and Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador also agreed in a conversation Thursday that "additional enforcement actions are urgently needed" to slow migration to the southern border and reopen two ports of entry in Texas that were shut down when as tens of thousands of migrants crossed via trains in recent days, said White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby.

Asked about the border surge during a press briefing Thursday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre noted that Biden added 24,000 border agents this year. "The president has done everything that he can, right, on his own," she said.

Johnson spokesperson Raj Shah called Jean-Pierre's statement an "insult to the American people" and said the administration's policies "have led to the historic crisis we are seeing on a daily basis."

Biden administration officials have been working with the Senate to draft major changes to border policies as illegal crossings have surged. More than 2 million people have been arrested for illegally crossing the southern border over the last two fiscal years for the first time, as migrants flee organized crime, oppressive political regimes, natural disasters and poverty in their home countries in Central and South America.

Senate negotiators have been saying for days that they are making progress, but have revealed little about what a framework agreement might look like.

Senate Republicans have demanded sweeping changes to the asylum process. They have proposed requiring migrants to prove they were denied entry in at least one other country between the U.S. and their home nation in order to apply for asylum, and proposed requiring migrants prove it is “more likely than not” they would face persecution in their home, rather than the current standard of a “significant possibility.” They have also advocated for restricting the use of humanitarian parole.

Some leading Democrats agree there must be changes at the border and say they're seeking a compromise that will humanely address the influx of asylum seekers. However, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus has slammed the negotiation as an inappropriate consideration of Republicans' "cruel and unrealistic demands."

House Republicans passed their own border security bill earlier this year, which would restart border wall construction and make it significantly more challenging for migrants to get asylum in the United States. The legislation did not get a single Democratic vote in the House and was rejected by members of both parties in the Senate.