Republican Kentucky Rep. Andy Barr clashed with CNN’s Boris Sanchez over border policy on Thursday.
The House of Representatives’ second consolidated spending bill for fiscal year 2024 includes $496 million to recruit 22,000 U.S. Border Patrol agents and $3.45 billion to increase the number of detention beds for those in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody by 7,500. Barr and Sanchez sparred on “CNN Newsroom” over the bill’s contents compared to the previous bipartisan border bill.
“The [bipartisan border] bill didn’t codify allowing illegal crossings,” Sanchez said. “It set a threshold of undocumented crossings that would have allowed the executive to say ‘shut down the border right now.’ That’s very different than saying we’re going to allow this many people through.”
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“It put in federal law, Boris, it put in federal law an amount of illegal crossings that simply does not exist in current law,” Barr said before getting cut off by the CNN host.
The bipartisan border bill included a provision that the border can stay open as long as under 5,000 migrants enter per day. Authorities would be able to remove migrants without removal proceedings if the week-long average of crossing rose above that number.
“The idea that he wanted to negotiate with people that were asking for amnesty, that bill didn‘t contain anything related to amnesty,” Sanchez said.
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“Boris, it had $7 billion for amnesty jurisdictions,” Barr said. “You’re just wrong, that’s not true. That bill would be a magnet for more illegal immigration … What we need, Boris, is border security. We need to reinstitute the successful policies of the Trump Administration. We need to finish the border wall. We need remain in Mexico. We need the migrant protection protocols. We need to end this disastrous catch and release that resulted in a murder of Laken Riley and others.”
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