Republicans plan to use a 2006 border security law supported by more than half of Senate Democrats to fund the wall President-elect Donald Trump pledged his administration would construct, Politico reported Thursday. The Secure Fence Act mandated double-layer fencing between particular ports of entry from just east of San Diego all the way to the southern tip of Texas, totaling hundreds upon hundreds of miles. The language was amended in a 2007 appropriations bill to provide the Homeland Security Department discretion to choose the nature and type of the barrier, and to require simply that 700 miles of it be established, regardless of where. Republican lawmakers and immigration hawks once decried the changes for effectively “gutting” the original measure. But with Trump to take office and the GOP to continue its congressional majority, the lack of constraints could empower the new White House to call for whatever kind of wall it wants, however long it wants it to be.
Many Democrats may rue the day, if only because of their pending political discomfort for supporting the 2006 legislation. None other than Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, as well as Sens. Tom Carper, Dianne Feinstein, Bill Nelson, Debbie Stabenow, and Ron Wyden, were among the 26 Senate minority backers of the Fence Act. Sen. Sherrod Brown, a House member at the time, also voted in favor of the package. Then being an election year, their cohort upbraided the GOP majority for legislating only on border security in its consideration of immigration reform. But Feinstein, for one, didn’t use politics as an out—rather, she owned her vote.
“Democrats are solidly behind controlling the border, and we support the border fence,” she said, according to the Los Angeles Daily News.
“We’ve got to get tough on the border. There’s no question the border is a sieve.”
Then-Senate minority leader Harry Reid echoed her: “Democrats are for border security,” he was quoted as saying plainly. “And when the roll is called you’ll find Democrats on that roll.”
Additional, typically liberal Senate Democrats, while maintaining their preference for comprehensive reform, granted that more border security was a necessary policy. Former Iowa senator Tom Harkin was one of them. “I believe that strengthening our border security is a key component to any comprehensive immigration solution and that is why I supported the Secure Fence Act,” he said.
Other recently retired senators firmly on the party’s left who boosted the bill were California’s Barbara Boxer and Maryland’s Barbara Mikulski. The three biggest names, however, were at one point the three highest-ranking members of the Obama administration: then-Sens. Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton.
The seven yea votes that remain in the Senate today could challenge any charges that voting against the spending they already authorized would amount to a volte-face. Ironically, now that Trump, Paul Ryan, and Mitch McConnell are in charge of Washington, the Fence Act the Democrats supported and saw watered down could turn out to be more limited in scope than what exists now. But trying to square their shift with some of their public demands for tougher border security is another—and awkward—matter entirely. (Requests to the senators’ offices for comment were not immediately returned.)
Grouping these seven lawmakers with the upper chamber’s 52 Republicans makes 59, one short of the “filibuster-proof” 60 needed to overcome procedural hurdles on most legislation and give the GOP power to pass its agenda out of the Senate. Their past votes may be prologue to the majority’s bid to advance one of the elected president’s top campaign vows.
