Undocumented immigrants walk along the U.S.-Mexico border wall after they ran across the shallow Rio Grande into El Paso on March 17, 2021, in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. (John Moore, Getty Images/TNS)
(Tribune News Service) — Americans increasingly favor tougher measures to curb immigration at the U.S. border with Mexico, though sentiment is shifting against the practice of border states to send migrants northward, according to a CBS News/YouGov poll.
With Senate negotiations on border policy stuck in a partisan deadlock, the issue has become an early battleground in the 2024 election — spurred by former President Donald Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination.
Asked whether President Joe Biden’s administration should be tougher on immigrants crossing the border, 63% in the poll agreed, compared with 55% in September.
Two lawmakers said Sunday that Senate negotiators on border security are expected to present a proposal this week after months of impasse.
“We’re hoping to get a text out later this week,” Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma, the main Republican negotiator, said on Fox News Sunday. “Everybody will have time to be able to read it and go through it. Nobody is going to be jammed in this process.”
Representative Tony Gonzales, a Texas Republican, cited “chaos” at the border with Mexico and said he’s hopeful a Senate package will emerge this week.
“That’s encouraging. I want us to see that. I want us to start talking about these national-security issues that we have,” he said on ABC’s This Week.
Poll respondents faulted both the White House and congressional Republicans for the situation at the U.S.-Mexican border — 68% disapproved of Biden’s handling, while 65% said the same about GOP lawmakers.
Support for officials in U.S. border regions who are sending migrants to northern cities and states declined to 43% from 50% in September.
Lankford and Gonzales didn’t provide specifics on which policies the bill might include, nor on a potential top-line spending number. Republicans are demanding stricter asylum policies and measures to reduce the number of migrants entering the southern border in exchange for clearing the foreign military aid sought by the White House.
“We’re working to thread the needle for things that actually work,” Lankford said.
House Speaker Mike Johnson has been considering talks with the White House over immigration policies. Lankford suggested that such talks would be helpful.
At the same time, Congress must reach a deal for funding the U.S. government to avoid the start of a government shutdown on Jan. 20.
Representative Elise Stefanik, a Republican from New York who’s closely aligned with Trump, sought to blame any government shutdown on President Joe Biden.
“We don’t support shutting down the government, but we must secure the border,” Stefanik said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “So, the person who’s threatening a government shutdown is Joe Biden, who refuses to secure the border.”
The Jan. 3-5 CBS poll of 2,157 people has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points.
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