Republican Uses Trump's Own Words on the Border Against Him

Texas Representative Chip Roy quoted a Donald Trump social media post on the House floor, calling out the former president's record on immigration.

Trump, the Republican presidential front-runner, has publicly criticized the $118 billion border bill introduced in the Senate, calling it "horrendous" and "a death wish for the Republican Party" if approved. He has instead urged President Joe Biden to "close the border" as a means of avoiding a costly bill, saying that's what he would do if in office.

Last month, Roy—who endorsed former candidate and current Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for president—said that Trump and former Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan "failed in 2018 to actually move a border security bill to tighten this so that we weren't dealing with this crisis right now."

"We're not just going to pass the buck and say, 'Oh, any president can just walk in and secure the border,'" Roy, a Republican, said on Tuesday. "I saw former President Trump make that allegation today on one of his social media posts: 'All a president has to do is declare the border is closed, and it's closed.'

"Well, with all due respect, that didn't happen in 2017, '18, '19 and '20. There were millions of people that came into the United States during those four years."

Newsweek reached out to Roy's office and the Trump campaign via email for comment.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has shared Trump's resentment regarding the proposal coming out of the Senate.

In a January 26 letter to GOP colleagues, he declared the legislation "dead on arrival" in his chamber. Once the wording of the legislation became known, he said it was "even worse than we expected, and won't come close to ending the border catastrophe the president has created."

When pressed on whether he is holding it to appease Trump, Johnson refuted the notion and told NBC's Meet the Press host Kristin Welker on Sunday that Trump "is not calling the shots."

However, opposition to the bill could have political ramifications later this year.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which represents and advocates for businesses, supports the Senate legislation and said on Monday that it was "pleased to see desperately needed border security, asylum, and immigration reforms included in the emergency supplemental funding proposal before the U.S. Senate." The Border Patrol union also supports its passing.

Migrant encounters across U.S. borders exceeded 988,900 between October and December, following a record-setting number in fiscal year 2023.

As part of the current fiscal year that began in October, there were 309,114 migrant encounters that month, 308,669 in November and 371,036 in December. In December, about 300,000 migrants—nearly 10,000 per day—came into the U.S. through Mexico, including about 250,000 between ports of entry, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data. Federal border agents encountered about 2.5 million migrants in total last year, surpassing the previous record high from the year before.