Commentary: MAGA effect deals fatal blow to bipartisan border legislation

The Senate worked for months on a bipartisan bill on the border that Republicans had been calling for ever since President Joe Biden took office. The bill would dramatically change immigration law for the first time in decades. It was endorsed by the Border Patrol Union. If anyone knows if the proposed bill was good for them and for helping on the border crisis it’s U.S. Border Patrol agents.

The proposal would implement strict limits and severely curtail asylum, a break from decades-long protocol. It would have raised the legal standard of proof to pass the initial screening for asylum, making it potentially more difficult for asylum seekers to pass.

It introduced a new process in which U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services would decide an asylum claim without it going through the lengthy immigration court system.

Senators of both parties had come to an agreement on the proposal. Then, at the last minute, Donald Trump convinced Republican senators to kill it because he wants to use the “border crisis” as a campaign issue against President Biden. Never mind the national security at the border. Trump and his MAGA puppet congressmen don’t care to solve the border problem. They want their guru back in power. So all their crying for years about the “open border” was just more deceitful, anti-American right-wing propaganda.

Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, who negotiated the proposal, has received threats that he will be destroyed, which is now normal for anyone who opposes anything Trump. These threats against Trump opponents are going on all over the country. That’s what Trump’s effect has done to national politics. This is very typical of fascist countries.

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives’ leader Mike Johnson called it “dead on arrival” even before he read it. Johnson takes his orders from disgraced ex-president Trump, who is not even a member of our elected government.

House Republicans have done absolutely nothing to help American citizens. They have wasted all their time doing what wacko Marjorie Greene wants. Trying to impeach President Biden without any reason and going after Hunter Biden, who was never in the government. They are also withholding aid to Ukraine, in effect supporting the Trump’s buddy Vladimir Putin’s invasion in his attempt to restore the Soviet Union.

Trump has taken over the once-legitimate Republican Party. It is now the Trump MAGA party. Their main goal is to elect Trump so he can stay of jail. They want a man who attempted a coup, who thinks the law doesn’t apply to him for president.

The U.S. was once the leader of democratic freedom-loving people in the world. Trump and his power-hungry followers are destroying that. In their thirst to stay in power they are willing to sacrifice our democratic form of government.

As patriots of the United States of America, we must not let that happen.

Beto Conde lives in Rancho Viejo.