The Senate has passed a bipartisan immigration bill three decades in the making. Donald Trump is working to derail it. And many Republicans in Congress are rushing to help — even if it means throwing fellow conservative colleagues under the bus.

The bill contains plenty to offend both sides. It provides resources to accelerate asylum review, which has long suffered from intentional Congressional underfunding. It toughens border enforcement while supplementing the physical barrier. It increases the number of Border Patrol agents, asylum officers, detention beds and deportation flights out, to more quickly process and deport people, ending “catch-and-release.” It relaxes some work restrictions to reduce the burden on host communities. If, on any given day, migrants surge and overwhelm resources (a maximum of 5,000 people), the U.S. will close the border.

Republicans should be doing backflips. The bill presents the most enforcement-forward legislation ever passed out of either chamber. After calling the surge at the border an “invasion” for the past three years, Trump loyalists recently organized a border caravan at the border complete with confederate flags and bathtub baptisms. After blaming immigration for threats to our national sovereignty, health and safety, reform is urgent, they say, as terrorist attacks on American soil are imminent.

GOP senators who have invested serious time into the current effort are not happy about Trump’s latest command.

Despite the hyped-up hysteria, amplified on the hour by Fox News, Republicans intend to kill their own success to aid Trump’s reelection efforts. Trump doesn’t want immigration solved this year because border legislation, if signed into law, could give President Biden bragging rights going into the November election. Better to preserve and even worsen the optics of a border “crisis” to use as a political weapon against Biden.

Speaker Mike Johnson, who spearheaded Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, has therefore declared that the Senate’s new immigration proposal will be “dead on arrival” in the House.

“This is a very bad bill for his career,” the ex-president said........

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