Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Tim Scott (R-SC) urged President Joe Biden to take executive action on the migrant crisis during a Friday visit to the southern border.
The South Carolina Republicans touched down in Eagle Pass, Texas, on Friday afternoon, three days after both senators voted against the defense supplemental spending bill aiding Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan over problems with the failed border deal.
“Tim and I came here to listen and learn, and we’ve learned a lot,” Graham said at a Friday press conference. “Policy changes necessary to stop this can be done without law changes, even though I’m willing to change the law. If you went back to ‘Remain in Mexico’ and deported people at a faster rate, you’d fix most of this.”
“If you want to help Ukraine, which I do, you’ve got to start by helping America first,” he added.
Graham timed the trip to coincide with the Munich Security Conference, which he typically attends, to urge Congress to include border security provisions in the national security supplemental.
South Carolina’s senior senator, a close ally of former President Donald Trump, is one of the Republican Party’s staunchest supporters of U.S. involvement in Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s military invasion. He was an adviser in the bipartisan border security talks for the GOP side before that deal fell apart, eventually becoming an opponent of the bill for lacking a border component.
“This whole process has been a complete debacle,” Graham said on the Senate floor late Monday, criticizing House Republicans and Senate leadership for their respective approaches to the defense supplemental.
While Graham maintained his support for Ukraine in his floor speech, he explained that he was voting against the bill because “we must deal with our border first.” Graham, who was also a longtime friend and ally of the late Arizona Sen. John McCain, is one of the Senate’s biggest defense hawks despite his Trump ties, making his vote against the supplemental noteworthy.
Scott, who also voted against the supplemental when it passed 70-29 on Tuesday, similarly insisted on Friday that Congress and the Biden administration act on border security. The Palmetto State’s junior senator has also garnered vice presidential buzz since dropping out of the 2024 GOP primary and endorsing Trump.
“Joe Biden has the tools to fix this crisis, but when the president of the United States is more interested in selling the construction material for the wall than he is in using it to build a structure that will keep our country safe, that tells Americans all we need to know about his commitment to securing our border,” Scott said in a statement.
“We were better off under President Trump, and this day has only reinforced that,” he added.
The senators were criticized over the trip as they touched down in Texas, with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) releasing a statement calling both out for their votes against the supplemental and opposition to the bipartisan border deal.
“It’s very nice that Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott are taking a field trip to the border. But their actions speak louder than words,” Schumer said. “Senators Graham and Scott voted to keep the status quo and against the necessary resources to secure the border. We hope their trip will make them see the light and tell Trump to support our bipartisan border agreement.”
The White House also knocked the trip, with a spokesperson releasing a statement calling on the senators to return to Washington and revive the abandoned border deal.
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“Sen. Lindsey Graham and Sen. Tim Scott voted against the toughest, fairest, bipartisan border security deal in decades, turning their backs on the Border Patrol Union and instead siding with drug cartels, human smugglers, and Donald Trump,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said.
“Tellingly, Sen. Graham praised the bipartisan agreement, and Sen. Scott endorsed the kind of approach the deal took before they chose politics over border security,” he added. “Sen. Graham and Sen. Scott should go back to Washington and un-kill the landmark border security legislation that is critical to actually supporting law enforcement and halting deadly fentanyl trafficking.”