After the text of the Schumer-Lankford Senate Border Deal was released, conservatives across the country sounded off on it, calling it out for, in their view, doing little to stem the flow of illegal immigrants into the country and much to enable the continued disastrous state of things at the border. Among those who did so was Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, who said that it is “dead on arrival in the House.”
Speaker Johnson did so both in a post on X (formerly Twitter) and during an interview with Fox News Channel’s Laura Ingraham on her show “The Ingraham Angle.” That interview took place on the night of Monday, February 5th.
Posting about the matter on X, Speaker Johnson argued that the only deal he and the House will find acceptable is one that cracks down on illegal immigration, not one that incentivizes it. He said, “This immigration bill is dead on arrival in the House. We will not pass immigration legislation that further incentivizes illegal immigration, does not reform asylum and parole in a meaningful way, and empowers President Biden and his cabinet, the architects of this catastrophe.”
Similarly, in another post on X, Speaker Johnson declared that he had “seen enough” to be firmly against the deal. He said, “I’ve seen enough. This bill is even worse than we expected, and won’t come close to ending the border catastrophe the President has created. As the lead Democrat negotiator proclaimed: Under this legislation, “the border never closes.” If this bill reaches the House, it will be dead on arrival.”
During his interview with Ingraham, Speaker Johnson made much the same argument about the deal, saying that it will do nothing to reverse the circumstances that created the border “catastrophe.” He told Ingraham, “It would not resolve any of the problems, not reform in any meaningful way the broken asylum system, the broken parole process, and all the things that have created this catastrophe.”
Continuing, he added that the bill was yet worse in that it would further empower Alejandro Mayorkas, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, whose policies he argued put America in this terrible situation. He said, “And, by the way, meanwhile, it further empowers the very Cabinet secretary who designed and created this mess.”
Further explaining his view on the bill and its flaws before firmly stating that it will go absolutely nowhere in the House of Representatives, Speaker Johnson said, “They don’t follow federal law. Why would we do this anyway? But the bill itself would actually do more harm than good, and that’s why we have said it’s a nonstarter over here in the House.”
Watch him speak to FNC’s Laura Ingraham here:
Speaker Johnson was far from alone in calling out the border deal. Former President Donald Trump, posting about the situation on his Truth Social platform, wrote, “The ridiculous “Border” Bill is nothing more than a highly sophisticated trap for Republicans to assume the blame on what the Radical Left Democrats have done to our Border, just in time for our most important EVER Election. Don’t fall for it!!!”
Featured image credit: By Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America – Mike Johnson, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=139920652
"*" indicates required fields