Bipartisan talks impasse

Bipartisan talks on migrant family separation hit Senate impasse

By ELANA SCHOR

Bipartisan Senate talks on a long-term fix for the Trump administration’s detention of migrant families publicly sputtered on Wednesday, one day ahead of a key legal deadline for reunifying separated parents and children.

Four senators who have worked across the aisle for months on a legislative remedy after this spring’s family separation crisis continue to trade ideas as well as language. But the extent of their impasse was laid bare Wednesday when Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) took to the floor to seek unanimous passage of his proposal to ease requirements under a 1997 settlement that set strict standards for the detention of migrant children — a nonstarter for Democrats.

Democrats objected to Tillis’ request, setting up a back-and-forth that revealed ongoing tensions over how to treat that 1997 court settlement, known as the Flores agreement. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the minority whip and one of two Democrats leading the negotiations, lamented afterward that the group has had only “three meetings in five weeks” and gotten no responses to requests for more information from the Trump administration.

“At this point, I cannot give up on the humanitarian standards established by Flores, and that seems to be the starting point on the Republican side,” Durbin said in an interview.

He did align with Republicans on one element of the immigration debate: hiring more immigration judges to help reduce the backlog of cases that has forced some migrants into extended detention.

Yet as the Congressional Hispanic Caucus left a meeting with Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen frustrated by her insistence that the administration is on track to meet Thursday’s court-ordered deadline to reunite separated families, senators appeared caught in a stalemate over how to move forward. Tillis said in an interview before his public push for his GOP-only bill that “I don't think we’ve moved very much since last week” despite the broad consensus among both parties that “we want to solve it.”

Tillis said that Senate discussions had largely focused on the 1997 settlement “for the last two or three weeks,” disputing that his bill would mean “that we’ve completely taken away Flores.”

“We’re not going to allow for indefinite detention of unaccompanied children,” Tillis said in an interview. “That part of Flores will still be enforced.”

President Donald Trump signed an executive order last month designed to effectively end migrant family separations that had set off a nationwide outcry and criticism on both sides of the aisle. That order, however, included a Justice Department request to modify the Flores agreement that a federal judge turned down earlier this month. In addition, it amounted to only a temporary fix given the unclear status of the administration’s “zero tolerance” policy to prosecute even misdemeanor border crossings.

Flores generally limits the detention of migrant children to 20 days, but Tillis suggested Wednesday on the floor of the Senate that “40 to 60 days” would be a reasonable time to allow for migrant family detention “while they are going through the adjudication process.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had urged the bipartisan quartet to reach agreement on a narrow immigration measure before last month’s recess, but the floor debate on Wednesday indicated that the two parties remain quite far apart — albeit interested in continuing to talk.

Durbin said he had suggested to Tillis that they make a fresh attempt to “see if there’s any common ground” between competing Democratic and Republican bills.

Another GOP negotiator on the issue, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, said he had “circulated legislative text” to Democratic counterparts who had indicated their continued interest in collaborating.

“I don’t know if that indication is genuine or not. I hope that it is,” Cruz told reporters, adding that “it’s certainly possible that in an election year, a few months out from the election, that Democrats will make a decision to play politics with it rather than come together and solve the problem.”

Asked whether the proposal he had crafted amounted to a compromise from his initial family-separations bill, which raised Democratic concerns by permitting the detention of asylum-seeking families together, Cruz offered no firm answer.

And the fourth principal negotiator on an immigration bill, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), offered a differing view of the status of talks. “I think they’re going well,” she said in a brief interview.