Sen. Roger Marshall moves to add border security to debt ceiling bill

WASHINGTON – A House-passed border security act will be pitched as one of several Senate amendments to the debt ceiling legislation meant to prevent the US from going into default as soon as next week, The Post has learned.

“In the current debt ‘deal,’ zero dollars go to securing our southern border. Think about that,” Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) said in an interview Thursday. “A bill that increases our debt by trillions fails to address our wide-open borders that has allowed cartels, criminals, and lethal fentanyl to pour into our communities and poison our children.”

Marshall’s amendment, modeled after the House’s “Secure the Border Act,” will propose restarting construction of the border wall, adding “thousands more Border Patrol agents” and providing better technology at entry sites to detect drugs and illegal immigration.

The border bill passed the Republican-led House on May 11, the same day as the expiration of the pandemic-era Title 42 health policy.

It has been considered dead on arrival in the Democrat-controlled Senate, and President Biden vowed to veto the legislation if it were to reach his desk.

Now, with the nation’s ability to avoid a first-ever default riding on the bipartisan debt ceiling compromise, which the House passed on Wednesday, Marshall hopes to force the Senate to take up the border bill as well.

“When thousands of unknown migrants escape into our country every week, we cannot waste time forming committees and praying about it,” Marshall said. “My amendment would build the wall, dismantle Biden’s catch and release policy, and restore law and order in our country making every American safer.”

Marshall’s amendment will also call for reforming the asylum process “to deter frivolous claims and prohibit gang members, felons and drunk drivers” from abusing the system; strengthening officials’ authority to detain and deport migrants who sneak into the country between ports of entry; and phasing in a mandate that all employers verify their employee’s legal right to work in the US.

The amendment would also end Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkis’ authority to grant humanitarian parole for migrants “so that broad, category-based parole programs cannot be established to circumvent Congress.”

Additionally, the amendment would ensure children “are screened and processed expeditiously with family members and sent home” to prevent surges of unaccompanied minors at the southern border.

Marshall is offering the amendment after leading a trip to the southern border for members of Congress as Title 42 expired.

The policy had helped to stem the flow of migrants into the US by providing a way to quickly deny asylum seekers’ requests to stay.

On the trip, Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd told lawmakers that under Title 42, border agents sent 40% of migrants immediately back into Mexico.

Without it, Judd said, none are sent back without due process, which takes years to accomplish as case backlogs have pushed next-available court dates out far into the future.

While Marshall aims to add to the debt ceiling bill, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) plans to introduce an amendment that would remove an element of the bipartisan bill that provided approval to build a 300-mile gas pipeline from northwest West Virginia to southern Virginia.

Approval of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which is heartily supported by Kaine’s fellow Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, was added to the debt ceiling bill as part of the deal between Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

“Pipeline routing [and] pipeline need is not to be determined by Congress, instead, you put it in administrative agencies,” Kaine said on the Senate floor Thursday. “Why do you do that? It’s because a they have expertise and that’s less likely to be [the case] if you were to let Congress do pipeline deals.”

The pipeline has been opposed by liberals over environmental concerns.

A total of 11 amendments, including Marshall’s and Kaine’s, will be considered before a final vote on the debt ceiling bill Thursday night. If any amendment is approved, the bill will have to go back to the House for another vote — burning precious time before Monday, when Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said the US could default.