a bipartisan border deal that includes foreign aid for Israel and Ukraine was doomed before it even reached the US senate floor today the $118 billion Bill package includes dramatic changes to immigration law that GOP members initially backed but are now rejecting under pressure from Donald Trump who's making it a campaign issue Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will put forward a standalone package that includes only emergency funding for the two War torn countries while Nick the immigration component as senior political correspondent David Cruz reports the debacle is frustrating immigrant rights groups here at home by the time this report is done so will the chances be of the immigration side of the National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2024 thus ending the latest attempt at any kind of immigration related policy change despite reports that the immigration side of this bill took months to negotiate and now appears Dead on Arrival most Advocates say its death was actually not unwelcome certainly it's extremely frustrating disappointing deceiving to see the administration that had committed to passing immigration reform to putting all 11 million immigrants on a pathway to citizenship undocumented immigrants on a pathway to citizenship the United States um really take an entire to toome of the Trump book um and try to pass it into law Sarah Cain of make the road action says the president has inherited a broken system but adds that the proposals in the bill represented a capitulation and a lose lose for anyone hoping for even the most modest reforms absolutely is a trap and you know the the legislation would have given ice the largest budget to detain people in the history of the agency this is an agency that has proven time and time again to be um deceitful to be a violator of Human Rights this completely changes the Asylum system makes it much more difficult to apply and would detain ases um and it also creates numerous problems for immigrants who already in this country by increasing deportation Authority Congressman Rob Menendez who sits on the house Homeland Security committee and co-chairs the Hispanic caucuses immigration task force says the idea was to border enforcement a republican priority to the supplemental as a way to bring GOP lawmakers in on a deal to fund Ukraine and Israel the original supplemental you know was largely enforcement based and was meant to get Republicans on board when it didn't they opened it up to the bipartisan negotiation which got more Republican priorities into the package and then they didn't even have the they they don't seem to have the appetite for that so um you know it's it's it's a challenge this is clearly an issue that they think has political weight for them and they want to leverage it to their advantage as evidenced by the Republican defections after former president Trump came out against it today speaker Johnson whose tenuous hold on the speakership is subject to the political whims of trump acolytes in the house Express confidence that what remains of the supplemental will make its way through both houses eventually we're governing here sometimes it's messy that you know the framers anticipated that you would have a system where people with very different philosophical viewpoints that come from different parts of the country and different constituencies would have different ideas on how to resolve their problems but what they also anticipated is that we'd be able to get in a room and arm wrestle over public policy and come to consensus to move the ball forward for the most people that is what's happening here you're seeing the messy sausage making the the process of democracy play out and uh it's not always clean it's not always pretty but the job will be be done at the end of the day maybe but the one certainty is that immigration will not be a part of it that discussion as per usual with this issue we'll have to wait I'm David Cruz NJ Spotlight News [Music]