A handful of senators are working to strike separate 11th-hour immigration deals before Republicans take control of the House in January and make the politically tricky agreements harder to reach. Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) have outlined a potential immigration proposal that would provide a path to legalization for 2 million undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children, known as “dreamers,” in exchange for at least $25 billion in increased funding for the Border Patrol and border security. The bipartisan framework would also extend Title 42 for at least a year until new “regional processing centers” provided for in the bill could be built. The Trump administration instituted Title 42 during the coronavirus pandemic, arguing that the immediate expulsion of migrants was necessary because of the public health crisis.
Meanwhile, Sens. Michael F. Bennet (D-CO and Mike Crapo (R-ID) are negotiating on a narrower bill based on a House-passed measure that provided a pathway to citizenship for some undocumented farmworkers. The senators have not yet reached a deal but are hoping to get to one before the end of the lame-duck session this month. The last-minute push comes as Congress faces the end of another term without addressing an immigration overhaul and as the U.S. braces for the end of mass expulsions on the U.S.-Mexico border, as well as the possibility that a federal judge will wind down an Obama-era program that shields dreamers from being deported, the Washington Post reports.