As Arizona’s Independent senator, Kyrsten Sinema, a one-time Democrat, is doing her best to position herself as a bi-partisan deal-maker in the quagmire that has become one of America’s most pressing issues as it heads into the 2024 elections: immigration.
Her efforts to successfully navigate through a divided Congress and negotiate a compromise on border security measures come “months ahead of a critical deadline in which she must decide whether she will run for reelection as an Independent in a battleground state,” the Washington Examiner reports.
Arizona border communities and our men and women on the front lines don’t have the resources to manage the overwhelming numbers of migrants. Partisans must stop the fighting and act now to secure the border, keep communities safe, and ensure the humane treatment of migrants. https://t.co/7DNdnM2X9c
— Kyrsten Sinema (@SenatorSinema) December 22, 2023
Sinema, along with Sens. James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), are working on an agreement that could potentially earn GOP support for aid to Ukraine and Israel.
“The group of negotiators was unable to come to a compromise ahead of the new year, breaking for holiday recess without a deal in hand, despite staying in session for an additional week in December,” Congressional reporter Samantha-Jo Roth writes for The Examiner.
Roth continues:
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) pledged “swift action” on the legislation in January. Congress has not passed major legislation on immigration in 30 years, and that task will become even more difficult once lawmakers return on Jan. 8, as they juggle a handful of other priorities during yet another shutdown fight. Lawmakers have less than two weeks to pass four government funding bills and then another eight before the deadline on Feb. 8.
As a border state, Arizona has a front-row seat to the flood of illegal migrants that have crossed into Arizona, making Sinema’s perspective crucial to the negotiating team, Lankford said.
“She’s very knowledgeable, very engaged. She’s passionate about this, and right now, she is at the epicenter of the biggest part of the border crossings that are actually happening,” the Republican told reporters as senators prepared to leave D.C. for the holidays. “She doesn’t bring the hypothetical; she brings here’s what happened last night in Lukeville, Arizona, and here’s what’s happening in my town.”
.@SenMarkKelly & I are calling on the Administration to reassign the National Guard to reopen the Lukeville Port of Entry and reimburse our state for the costs Arizona taxpayers have spent on managing the border crisis. ⬇️https://t.co/SGRTXCszgh
— Kyrsten Sinema (@SenatorSinema) December 12, 2023
“So for everyone else, this is theory,” Lankford said, “but for her, it’s very real.”
Both Lankford and Murphy joined Sinema on a trip to the border at the beginning of 2023 “and they have been collaborating ever since on changes to immigration law,” Roth reports.
“We promised that we’d use what we learned to find common ground and deliver lasting solutions,” Sinema said earlier this month. “That’s exactly what we’re working on together.”
In January, I invited a bipartisan group of colleagues – including @SenatorLankford & @ChrisMurphyCT – to see AZ’s border crisis up close. We promised that we’d use what we learned to find common ground and deliver lasting solutions. That’s exactly what we’re working on together. pic.twitter.com/6IUmm0l5nv
— Kyrsten Sinema (@SenatorSinema) December 14, 2023
John LaBombard, a former aide to Sinema, called the Independent “a daughter of the border.”
“She grew up down there; she has seen first-hand the impacts of the federal government’s failure to address this issue,” he said, according to The Examiner. “If she is able to make more headway than she has already done, which is she has already done a lot of this to make Arizonans lives better on a substantive policy platform, the politics will follow.”
Negotiations, which have continued remotely through the holiday break, have most recently focused on “establishing a new expulsion authority at the border and changing rules related to asylum,” according to Roth.
The “hit a breaking point earlier this month,” Roth writes, “after Republicans demanded aggressive steps be taken to decrease the flow of immigration, such as scaling back the federal government’s power to allow certain categories of immigrants to remain in the country temporarily for humanitarian reasons.”
Democrats, meanwhile, have voiced their opposition to “making radical changes to legal immigration in the country.”
“We are closer than ever before to an agreement,” Murphy assured reporters last week.
“In a state that is 34% Republican, 34% independent, and 30% Democratic, according to Arizona data,” notes Roth, “some believe Sinema’s deal-making credentials could be a major advantage in an upcoming election.”
But according to Garrett Ventry, senior adviser to former Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, Sinema isn’t “serious” about border control.
“She has been in Congress for over a decade. She repeatedly voted against President Trump’s border wall. She supported sanctuary cities when she was a member of the House,” Ventry told The Examiner. “So this again, is someone who has not been serious about securing the border ever.”
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Melissa Fine is the former executive editor of Casino Player, Strictly Slots, and Poker
Digest magazines. She is a UCLA graduate, news junkie, and dedicated Stargate SG-
1 fan. Melissa currently lives with her dog and two cats in a tiny town in the Sierra
Nevada foothills.
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