Border Bills Come Down to Last Minute

The Senate will begin considering a series of House bills this week aimed at strengthening border security and toughening enforcement of immigration laws, but given the cool reception the measures are getting from many senators, it appears unlikely that much of the legislation will pass.

The bills, which include proposals to fence a third of the U.S.-Mexico border and allow state and local police to enforce immigration law, have raised hackles in the Senate for both political and policy reasons, and senior Republicans, as well as Democrats, have indicated they are not likely to support them.

With one week left before Congress adjourns, time is short to pass any immigration bills. The outcome will rest in part on closed-door decisions that committee chairs and Senate leaders make early this week. The fate of some of the legislation could be decided as early as today.

House Republicans have promoted their legislation as a necessary step before other immigration issues, such as establishing a guest worker program, can be addressed.

But with elections in November, many in the Senate see the House effort as little more than a campaign ploy.

One Republican Senate staffer pointed out that the House had not set aside money to fund its fence legislation. Approving the fence “just provides them with the 30-second ad they need” to show voters they have been tough about border security, said the staffer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the matter.

Lawmakers who support the broader immigration overhaul passed by the Senate and backed by President Bush -- which includes enforcement, a guest worker plan and a program to deal with illegal immigrants -- say the House emphasis on enforcement alone will do nothing to deal with the difficulties that illegal immigration creates.

“You build a fence 10 feet high, 20 feet high, 100 feet high, it won’t solve our problems,” said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

Both chambers have passed separate immigration bills that the House has refused to negotiate with the Senate, leaving the bills languishing. The House instead held national hearings in the summer to win public support for its enforcement-only approach.

When Congress reconvened this month, House leaders took parts of their original legislation, which had triggered huge street protests, and repackaged them into the smaller bills that are before the Senate now.

One of the House measures, criminalizing border tunnel construction, has a good chance of passing. But stiff challenges confront the others, including the proposed 700 miles of border fencing and two bills that would circumvent Supreme Court decisions preventing the indefinite detention of immigrants and would expand the ability of low-level immigration officials to quickly deport people without a court hearing.

Bush said last week that he would sign fence legislation into law, but many observers doubt Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) has enough support to end debate on the bill and bring it to a vote. Frist did not take an important procedural step Friday toward that end -- a sign many took to mean that he lacked the backing to do so.

If Frist cannot persuade enough senators to agree to vote on the measure, the legislation will die.

On Sunday, he said he hoped to get a vote on border security legislation this week, but he did not sound optimistic.

“We can’t have 2 million people coming to this country illegally this year. We’ve got to secure our borders.... Right now I’ve got a feeling the Democrats may obstruct it,” Frist said on ABC’s “This Week.”

Twenty-three Republicans and most Democrats backed the Senate bill, and many of them oppose not only a border barrier, but the House’s move to push their enforcement-first agenda in bits and pieces.

What’s more, Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho) want to add an agricultural guest worker program to the fence bill to help farmers in need of workers. “There is simply no reason AgJOBS has not been enacted, and no reason it could not be passed now,” they wrote Frist on Friday. “Farmers across this country have every reason to be angry and frustrated.”

House leaders are pushing to have their other immigration bills added to spending legislation for the Department of Homeland Security, which must be passed, at a stage when the Senate would be unable to debate or change them.

That tactic has angered senators who support broad immigration overhaul. Senior senators from both parties, including Reid and Republican Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, have indicated their opposition to attachment of House bills to funding legislation.

“I don’t see how we can deal with immigration on a piecemeal basis,” Specter said last week.

The chairman of the House Homeland Security Appropriations Committee, Rep. Harold Rogers (R-Ky.), has said he expects such opposition to keep some House bills from going forward.

Although the decision to attach the bills rests largely with Rogers’ Senate counterpart, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), there probably will be strong debate when the committee meets to decide the issue today.

nicole.gaouette@latimes.com

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Times staff writer Jim Puzzanghera contributed to this report.