Sen.
You could find the Connecticut Democrat on the Senate floor this week, bewildered at how Republicans could summarily reject the careful immigration compromise within hours of its release. Or in the Senate subway, asking a throng of reporters how he could ever trust Republicans again. Or on cable news shows, decrying the GOP’s allegiance to former President Donald Trump.
Murphy and his negotiating partners,
It wasn’t good enough for most Republican lawmakers, who criticized the bill for having too many exceptions to asylum restrictions and too few restrictions on the president’s power to release migrants into the US, among other complaints. They accused Democrats of pushing a weak bill to help cover President Joe Biden’s political vulnerabilities on border management.
Border Deal’s Demise Makes Future Immigration Talks Even Harder
The Senate formally voted the deal down on Wednesday. Murphy spoke to Bloomberg Government just before the vote about what the failure says about Congress’ ability to legislate on immigration, what part of the bill he hopes is resurrected, and whether he’s still an optimist about making deals on Capitol Hill.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: What does this mean for future immigration talks in Congress? How long before lawmakers can go back to the table for a bipartisan negotiation?
A: A decade? Republicans have made a pretty fundamental choice that they make over and over and over again. Republicans don’t really want to fix the border. They don’t really want to pass immigration reform. I was more optimistic than I should have been in retrospect. I sincerely believed that I was negotiating with a party that wanted to get to yes for the first time in a long time. I was obviously catastrophically wrong.
We probably just have to take no for an answer.
Q: Would you ever get involved again in broad immigration talks?
A: I spent the last six months becoming what passes for an expert in immigration law. I don’t plan on giving up on this issue. I think it’s really important to get our border under control, to reform our asylum process, and ultimately to get a pathway to citizenship for people that are in this country and part of our communities.
I just don’t know that that’s going to happen with Republicans. Ultimately I think this becomes one of those things that can only happen if Democrats have control.
Q: Do you see some of the provisions you negotiated coming back in future talks?
A: If you’re not ultimately negotiating with Republicans, you’re going to do something different than what we produced, so it’s hard to say. But the key reform in this bill was the reform to the asylum system. I’ll stand by that reform. There were elements of it that were designed to win Republican votes but by and large the reform was a really good one. It turned a system that was taking 10 years to get a result into a system that was going to take six months to get a result, without compromising people’s ability to apply for asylum and without eliminating due process.
Q: You got a lot of blowback from progressives who say the concessions you made in these negotiations undermine Democrats’ position in future talks. How do you respond to that?
A: The existing system is not working. And our positive agenda as a party should not begin and end with a pathway to citizenship. That should be a priority for us, but we should also have other priorities like reducing the number of people who show up at the southern border to a manageable number and getting the asylum system under control.
I went into this room knowing that there was an element of my party’s movement that does not want to give an inch on the issue of immigration and the border. Our reflexive, defensive position on immigration and border has not matched up well with where the majority of Americans are.
Q: Is there anything you think you could have done differently in the negotiation to win GOP support?
A: We listened carefully over and over to Republicans. I would argue that we essentially followed the script that Republicans provided on how to get this done and how to get their votes.
Q: The collapse of the border deal also means the Department of Homeland Security doesn’t get the money it requested last year to expand detention capacity, hire more personnel, and care for migrants. How’s that going to work out?
A: It’s not going to work out. If DHS doesn’t get supplemental funding, the money in the allocation is not enough. They will likely have to do a massive reprogramming almost as soon as the budget is passed.
My sense is that the supplemental border money is not moving forward because Republicans won’t support it, but that’s consistent with their overall plan. Their overall plan is to keep the border a mess and they’re not going to support policy or money that will help better manage the border.
Q: Have you soured on dealmaking in general?
A: No. After the guns negotiation, I wondered how much harder immigration could be. The answer is a lot harder.
I’m here because I want to get deals done, I think I’m pretty good at it, and I’m going to continue to try to find areas of common ground between Republicans and Democrats. I don’t think that opportunity will present itself on immigration anytime soon in the future.
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