Friday on Fox News Channel’s “The Ingraham Angle,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) rejected Senate Republican leadership negotiating with President Joe Biden for border enforcement.
The Utah Republican suggested the border issue was being used as “bait to extort” Republicans for Ukraine funding support.
“My reaction is that we have no business negotiating this deal and proceeding as if the border crisis unfolding in the United States, or anything having to do with a lack of enforcement authority by the president,” Lee said. “Look, existing law gives President Joe Biden more than enough authority to enforce the border, to stop this crisis, to prevent the 300,000 people who crossed illegally into our border just last month alone. And the 300 or so terrorists who have come across our borders, just the ones we know about. He’s got authority to do that. Remember, our asylum provisions are all written in may language, not shall, which means it’s discretionary. There is no right to it.”
“At any moment when we’re bogged down, the solution is, to stop processing asylum applicants, not to just say, ‘OK, you can come on in, we’ll buy your plane ticket anywhere to the United States,'” he continued. “That my number one concern with this proposal, with this entire negotiation is that it falsely suggests that the border crisis exists and persists for want of adequate legislative authority. That is not true. And so meanwhile, what President Biden and Mitch McConnell and a few others want to do is use the promise of border security provisions as bait to extort and extract Republican votes for Ukraine aid, they want to pass a $106 billion package, most of which goes to Ukraine. They don’t have the votes. So they’re promising border security. If they were willing to bring us border security, they’d have brought us border security a long time ago, and they could have done so under existing law.”
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