Senator Lankford On Progress Of Border Security Talks

With time running out before Congress breaks for the holidays, talks continue on legislation that would provide critical aid to Ukraine and Israel while also restoring order to the U.S.-Mexico border. Oklahoma Senator James Lankford is the lead negotiator for Senate Republicans.

Lankford and Republicans have made clear they will not support an aid package unless it includes major improvements to border security and changes in asylum policy.

Senator Lankford said Wednesday there has been real progress in the negotiations, but he doesn’t see a deal getting done before Christmas, despite months of personal effort.

"It sounds like I’m finger-pointing,” Lankford said in an interview, “but literally the White House has only joined us in the last 24 hours."

President Biden has signaled a willingness to compromise, as he wants badly to deliver on his promise of steadfast support and aid to Ukraine, whose President Zelenskyy stopped both at the White House and the Capitol Tuesday, making a personal plea for continued support.

"But he didn’t give us a date that we’ve got to have it done,” Lankford pointed out, “he didn’t say, ‘If we don’t have it by the end of the year, we’re in trouble.’”

Still, Lankford — and many GOP Senators — wants to help, which is why, he says, he continues to push for a resolution on the border issues, sitting down now with White House aids, Democrats, and Homeland Security officials.

A sign that they feel good about the direction of the talks and who else has been added to the conversation.

"We have now added staff into the mix to be able to start working on some of the technical language,” Lankford explained, “and to pull in different attorneys from different places."

Illegal border crossings are at all-time highs — about 10,000 per day in recent weeks. It’s far too many for the current asylum system to handle. Lankford says only about 500 of those asylum seekers can be processed in a day, and the others are sent on with instructions to appear in court at some later date.

"We’re trying to figure out how do we actually get the asylum hearings done at the border so we can actually evaluate who qualifies for asylum and, for the thousands of people that don’t qualify, be able to turn those folks around,” Lankford said.

Lankford says he knows there are those on the left who will say they're going too far and some on the right who will say it's not far enough, but he's optimistic about the new year.

"I do think we’re going to have the number (of votes) necessary to be able to actually get this passed,” Lankford concluded, “and actually do significant work to be able to change the border."

Lankford says there’s a reason this negotiation has been so hard and that it’s been three decades since Congress last passed real immigration reform: not only is it an issue that’s easily politicized, but he says immigration is an extremely difficult and technical part of the law.