Donald Trump will not be in workplace, however he’s utilizing his maintain on the Republican Party to maintain up border funding negotiations in Congress, kneecapping the federal authorities’s potential to higher tackle a state of affairs extensively considered as a logistical nightmare and humanitarian disaster. 

A bipartisan group of Senators have been dashing on Friday to hammer out a legislative package deal that may put billions of {dollars} in new assets towards the southern border, the place federal officers have been overwhelmed by a surge in migrant crossings. In October, President Joe Biden despatched an emergency funding request to Congress asking for extra brokers, officers and deportation flights. Late Friday, Biden launched a press release vowing to shut down the border if the plan turned regulation.

“What’s been negotiated would – if passed into law – be the toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border we’ve ever had in our country,” Biden stated.

Getting any border package deal by means of each chambers of Congress was all the time going to be a problem, however Trump’s urging of Republicans to refuse to assist the Biden administration tackle the state of affairs is prompting predictions that the problem could also be useless till after the November election.

Such an final result may exacerbate an already harmful dynamic on the border, say immigration consultants and lawmakers.

“It continues to hamstring the administration in establishing effective border control,” says Doris Meisner, a former commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and now a senior fellow on the Migration Policy Institute. “To not provide additional funding means it will continue to be extremely difficult to process people at the border, to place people that don’t have valid asylum claims into removal proceedings, to have funding to do return and deportation flights.”

In his unique request to Congress, Biden requested for funding to rent 1,300 border patrol brokers, 1,600 asylum officers, and 1,000 customs officers and drug investigators in addition to new border safety know-how that may detect fentanyl at ports of entry. Biden additionally requested funds to maintain extra folks in immigration detention and conduct extra flights to take away folks from the nation who don’t have a authorized pathway to keep.

In a transfer that was extensively considered as displaying how critical he was about getting a deal, Biden signaled a willingness to change asylum guidelines, one thing wanted by Republicans, however that some Democrats had lengthy opposed. Such a change may allow border officers to ship some migrants again house extra shortly and deter others from coming. “I believe we need significant policy changes at the border, including changes in our asylum system to ensure that we have authorities we need to control the border,” Biden stated on Jan. 19. “I’m ready to act,” he continued. “Now the question’s for the Speaker and House Republicans: Are they ready to act as well? They have to choose whether they want to solve a problem or keep weaponizing an issue to score political points against the president.”

The push for elevated border funding comes as unlawful crossings have reached a file excessive, with greater than 2.4 million apprehensions within the 2023 fiscal yr, in accordance to authorities knowledge. Border patrol brokers reported encountering 10,000 migrants per day for a number of days in December, stretching already overwhelmed assets. 

Senate leaders have been pushing for a bipartisan settlement that hyperlinks border safety funding with cash for Ukraine, however that’s seemingly a nonstarter within the Republican-led House. Still, some lawmakers had expressed hope in current weeks {that a} stand-alone border package deal was nonetheless viable.

“We don’t need to continue to perpetuate the crisis at the border,” Republican Sen. Tom Tillis of North Carolina stated on Thursday. “It’s all about politics and not having the courage to respectfully disagree with President Trump… I didn’t come here to have a president as a boss or a candidate as a boss.”

Asked by TIME if the situation at the southern border could get worse if that money is not approved, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre reiterated the Administration’s hope to get a bipartisan border deal signed into law. “We’re having a very important conversation with the Senate, Senate Republicans and Democrats,” she stated on Friday. “We think Congress must act; they need to act. And that’s how we’re going to deal with this issue.”

The Biden Administration is working with Mexican authorities to try to disrupt criminal human smuggling gangs bringing people from all over the world through Mexico to the U.S. border. It is also working to open offices in central American countries to process refugee claims before people make the dangerous journey to the U.S. border.

But those efforts aren’t expected to meaningfully address the current crisis. Experts say what the administration needs most pressingly is more personnel and other resources at the border. If the current influx continues unabated, it will only encourage more people to try to cross over, says Meisner. She explained that the lengthy backlogs in processing forces border officials to allow many migrants to enter the U.S.—often for months or even years—as they wait for asylum hearings to determine their status. 

A speedier system that more quickly identified those without legitimate asylum claims and returned them to their home countries would discourage more people from coming to the U.S., she says.

“People complain ‘fix the border,’ says Meisner. “It’s not possible to fix the border just in the executive branch. To fix the border requires actions by Congress.”

Congress “is the part of our government that is missing in action at this point,” she adds.

Trump’s meddling in the negotiations came to light on Wednesday in a closed-door meeting with Republicans that was first reported by Punchbowl News. In the meeting, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell acknowledged that Trump wants to make the situation at the southern border one of the key issues of his campaign and has urged Republicans to oppose the deal so that immigration remains a political vulnerability for Biden. 

“A Border Deal now would be another Gift to the Radical Left Democrats,” Trump said on social media on Friday. “They need it politically, but don’t care about our Border. What is currently being worked on in the Senate will be meaningless in terms of Border Security and Closure.” The former President added that the “ONLY HOPE” for a secure border was voting for him.

House Speaker Mike Johnson delivered his own warning shot to Senate negotiators on Friday, writing in a new letter that the emerging border deal—if reached—would be “dead on arrival” in his chamber, and reiterated his call for the Senate to pass the House’s more stringent immigration bill that aims to restrict migrants’ asylum eligibility and reinstate family detention.

Although he did not mention Trump by name in the letter, Johnson previously said that he “frequently” talks about congressional border negotiations with the former President, who urged him to oppose compromising. “Many of our constituents have asked an important question: ‘What is the point of negotiating new laws with an administration that will not enforce the laws already on the books?’” Johnson wrote.

But some Senate Republicans are concerned that by giving up on a border security bill in hopes of helping Trump, it allows President Biden and Democrats to claim that the GOP would rather have more chaos at the border than solve the actual problem.

Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah called Trump’s directive to oppose the border deal to help his presidential campaign “appalling.” 

“I think the border is a very important issue for Donald Trump. And the fact that he would communicate to Republican senators and congresspeople that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame Biden for it is really appalling,” Romney told reporters on Thursday.

Other Republicans, however, disagree that Trump is the reason for the dwindling support of the border deal. “No one has seen the border deal, and even its advocates admit it will do little to secure the border immediately,” Republican Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio posted on social media on Friday. “Blaming Donald Trump or any Republican for killing this deal is political malpractice.”

Trump further meddled in the Biden administration’s dealings on the border this week when he urged states to send their National Guards to the border to support Texas, after the US Supreme Court backed the Biden administration’s plan to remove razor wire installed at the border at Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s direction. Abbott has vowed to block the federal government from removing the razor wire.