WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson said the border deal being negotiated in the Senate is “dead on arrival” in its current form, CNN reported on Friday, citing a letter to Republican lawmakers in the House of Representatives.
Lawmakers said on Thursday that bipartisan U.S. Senate talks on a border security deal that some have set as a condition for additional Ukraine aid have hit a critical point.
No draft has been released, and Johnson appears to be referring to information leaked about the border proposals being worked on as part of a supplemental funding measure combining border security with aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.
“I wanted to provide a brief update regarding the supplemental and the border since the Senate appears unable to reach an agreement. If rumors about the contents of the draft proposal are true, it would have been dead on arrival in the House,” Johnson said in the letter to Republican colleagues, according to CNN.
House lawmakers, out on Friday, were scheduled to return on Monday.
Senate Republican leaders want a border deal that can win support from most Senate Republicans, in hopes of prompting the Republican-controlled House to take up the supplemental funding measure.
A small group of senators has spent months trying to iron out an agreement to address the flow of migrants across the U.S.-Mexico border. But the effort has recently encountered growing opposition among Republicans aligned with Donald Trump, the frontrunner for their party’s presidential nomination.
(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; editing by Jonathan Oatis)