EXCLUSIVE — Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) anticipates that Congress will need to pass a bill that locks in conservative border and immigration policies before President Donald Trump leaves office.
Lankford, one of three co-authors who spent months in late 2023 drafting a bipartisan border bill that ultimately failed to make it through the Senate, said legal challenges in court are part of the reason that Republicans in Congress ought to be thinking now about legislation, during an interview with the Washington Examiner.
“There will be a need for some legislation,” Lankford told the Washington Examiner during a phone call. “Right now, there’s not a need for it. I think once the court makes some rulings, then we’ll see what authorities are still needed to be able to make clear so that no one has to question again the power of the president to be able to protect the nation.
Lankford said regardless of how the courts rule in the more than 50 immigration-related lawsuits that plaintiffs have brought against the Trump administration since Jan. 20, concrete plans will need to be put into place to ensure the border does not see the millions of illegal crossings that it did under President Joe Biden.
“Who is president five years from now? How are they going to handle the border issues?” said Lankford. “I want to make sure the law is strong and the authorities are there — that no matter who is there, we don’t have another experience like what we had in 2021, 22, 23.”
Since taking office, Trump has declared a national emergency at the border, dispatched 10,000 troops, restarted “Remain in Mexico,” restarted border wall planning and construction, designated criminal cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, started expeditious removals of illegal immigrants, declared an invasion at the border, and taken other actions.
The legal blowback has been significant with three of the immigration-related lawsuits against Trump already having made it before the Supreme Court for review. Lankford said some of these legal challenges and potential changes to border security during the Trump administration could have been prevented if the bill that he worked on with Sens. Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) had been passed in 2024.
“I heard a conservative commentator two weeks ago that was upset at some of the courts and ruling … and the court may tell them, ‘No, they don’t have authority to be able to do that,” Lankford said. “This conservative commentator said, ‘Somebody needs to bring a bill to be able to close all these loopholes so we never have this court challenge.’ And I just laughed when I heard it, and I thought, ‘That’s exactly correct, and that’s exactly what I was trying to do, that there would be such clear authority for the executive branch to be able to use that power to be able to enforce our border, that there wouldn’t be a court challenge to it.’”
At the time of the negotiations in late 2023 and into February 2024, the number of immigrants apprehended by the Border Patrol for entering the United States from Mexico illegally hit an all-time high of 250,000 during the month of December 2023.
The trio of senators’ border bill was extensive. The U.S. Border Patrol union, the National Border Patrol Council, endorsed it, but immigration hawks and Trump himself came out against it, ultimately sidelining the effort to permanently address border issues in a bipartisan way.
For example, the bill would have allowed federal immigration officials to quickly resolve and possibly remove immigrants from the country when facilities at the border are maxed out of capacity to hold people.
At present, expedited removal can only happen at the border for people in custody, not for illegal immigrants arrested in the interior of the country. Having the ability to quickly remove people arrested within the United States would be a game changer now as the White House has its hands tied with too little detention space to detain immigrants before removing them.
VISIT TO BORDER REVEALED ‘REMARKABLE’ SHIFT BETWEEN BIDEN AND TRUMP: LANKFORD
A furious Sinema unloaded on House and Senate Republicans last spring for their refusal to consider the bill, calling out their hypocrisy and banning them from visiting her border state.
“We produced a bill that finally, after decades of all talk and no action, secures the border and solves the border crisis,” Sinema said during a fiery floor speech Wednesday afternoon. “We produced a bill many thought impossible. Our bill overhauls the broken system. It stops the misuse of parole, and it closes the border during surges, ensuring the quick detention and deportation of migrants who don’t have a legal right to be here. We end catch and release. We add more detention beds. We increase deportation flights. We quickly decide asylum claims.”