Senator Alex Padilla approached President Biden during a campaign fundraiser at a sprawling multi

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mansion in the Pacific Palisades last weekend to issue a warning.

Biden was at the palatial home of investors Jos Feliciano and Kwanza Jones to court donors and talk about his administration’s record, but Padilla pulled the president aside to discuss behind-the-scenes negotiations in the Senate.

Padilla worried that Biden was about to set a damaging precedent. He knew the White House was considering agreeing to permanent changes in immigration policy to win Senate Republicans’ support for about $110 billion in one-time aid to Ukraine, Israel and other U.S. allies.

‘The main message I wanted to convey is a warning [Biden] that Republican senators were dragging him into areas that were harmful policies,” Padilla told The Times in an interview Thursday. Biden “listened intently and asked when Padilla had last interacted with staffers in the West Wing,” the senator said.

Padilla declined to comment further on Biden’s response, but said he has been in contact “at least daily” since Thanksgiving with West Wing aides, including White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients and Steve Ricchetti, adviser to the president .

“I wish we had a conversation and made sure we got it [the change] Right,” Padilla said. “I think we’re in discussions right now to make sure we don’t misunderstand it.”

Padilla’s concerns and his fierce lobbying of the White House indicate that there is a deal between Ukraine, Israel and border policy

President

Biden and Senate leaders hoping to strike may struggle to gain broad Democratic support.

Congress must soon pass a supplemental funding bill to give Ukraine the help it needs to fend off Russia’s invasion.

to argue

Biden, Senate leaders

,

and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who visited Washington this week

have discussed

.

White House officials and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas intervened this week after it became clear that a bipartisan group of senators had failed to reach an agreement.

White House chief of staff Jeff Zients paused on Capitol Hill during the negotiations Thursday to emphasize the urgency behind the matter, a White House official said. CS confirms this.

Republicans have pushed for provisions that would allow border officials to expel migrants without screening them for asylum; expand detention of immigrants, including families; expand the use of expedited deportations from the border into the U.S. interior; and restrict who can apply for asylum. Republicans also sought to end the president’s authority to expedite humanitarian access to the U.S., which Biden has repeatedly turned to to welcome tens of thousands of migrants from Afghanistan, Ukraine, Venezuela and Cuba.

The White House is seriously considering two proposals from the Republican Party: allowing border officials to quickly expel migrants if the number of arrivals at the border exceeds a certain level, and raising the standard initially used to determine whether a migrant is eligible for asylum.

There is no agreement yet on the principles,” a congressional aide familiar with negotiations told The Times. “The text of the law is still a long way off. Negotiators continue to make progress toward a deal.

While Republicans insist a deal is out of reach, Democratic negotiators and White House officials have signaled they are willing to move closer to GOP demands on border policy to reach a deal before the end of the year . “We are making progress,” a White House official said Thursday. “We’re not there yet. But the conversation is moving in the right direction.”

late Thursday,

Senate Majority Leader Charles E.

Schumer

(DN.Y.)

The senators’ vacation was cut short, forcing them to remain in Washington for the vote next week. It is unclear when or if a bill will emerge or if there will be a floor vote. And even if the White House and Senate were to pull off a Christmas miracle, they would still need support from Democrats, who, like Padilla, have expressed deep concerns, and from the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, which will hold a meeting until January is recess.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) signaled Thursday that he would not recall his chamber to Washington.

For some reason, the Biden administration waited until this week to even begin negotiations with Congress on the border issue, he wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. While that work must continue, the House will not delay in receiving and discussing a rushed product.”

Republicans in the House of Representatives approved a $14 billion package earlier this month to bolster Israel’s efforts in the Gaza Strip. However, the bill cut funding authorized by Biden’s signature Inflation Reduction Act, leaving it dead on arrival in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Under Johnson, the House of Representatives has not approved additional funding for Ukraine or U.S. allies in the Pacific. However, House Republicans are urging Senate negotiators to include their May immigration bill in any deal with the White House.

This legislation, which amounts to a wish list of Republican Party immigration priorities, would crack down on illegal immigration by limiting asylum,

former president

Trump has championed border policies, extending the border wall, criminalizing visa overstays and requiring companies to verify employees’ legal eligibility to work.

Much of what is being considered in the negotiations would hamper U.S. Customs and Border Protection while not addressing the root cause of the migration, said Jason Houser, who until March was chief of staff at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Houser also worried that the negotiations could revive a version of the pandemic-era Title 42 policy, which allowed border officials to quickly expel migrants without considering their asylum claims. Under Trump-era policies, migrant arrivals at the border actually increased, in part because many migrants immediately recrossed after being expelled. Deportation is not the same as formal deportation, a process that can carry consequences such as criminal charges and a five-year ban from leaving the US

Making it easier for border officials to expel migrants will not reduce the number of people trying to cross the border because some countries don’t want to take in citizens the U.S. turns away, Houser said. Expelled migrants and the traffickers who bring them across borders would simply try again.

Kerri Talbot, executive director of the advocacy group Immigration Hub, hopes the negotiations will ultimately fail. Reviving an expulsion authority unrelated to national public health would be a blunt instrument that would not take into account the circumstances of each case, she said.

Talbot also worries that the White House is considering raising the legal bar that migrants must clear in their first interview with a border agent to avoid being expedited for deportation.

Almost no one has a lawyer at that point, said Talbot, a veteran immigrant advocate who helped write the comprehensive 2013 immigration reform bill that passed the Senate. So some people with valid cases are blocked.

The White House would make a political mistake by giving in to the demands of Republicans, Talbot and Beatriz Lopez, also from Immigration Hub

,

wrote in a letter to White House staff on Tuesday.

The majority of voters in America are pro-immigrant and pro-order, not in favor of separating families, deporting long-settled immigrants or ending our asylum system, they wrote. Accepting the Republican Party’s demands means accepting a shortage of support for President Biden in 2024.

However, other experts say an agreement on border policy in November next year may not hurt Biden’s re-election chances.

Many of the White House’s reported concessions “are a signal that the Biden administration is trying to court the center, if not the right wing, on immigration,” said Tom Wong, a political science professor and founder and director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Center.

the University of California, UC

San Diego. While this move could alienate people on the left, voters in the center will face the most consequences

,

in the presidential election, Wong said.

“The Biden administration is taking a political risk by moving to the right on immigration,” Wong said. But for people on the left, a second Trump term would be “much more dangerous to our immigration system than a second Biden administration that would cave to some Republican policy proposals,” he added.

Padilla declined to say how he would vote on any bill. He, like other senators, is still waiting to see what the negotiators will deliver. But he said he would have a hard time “conceding bad politics to Republicans and showing nothing to help Dreamers, farm workers, essential workers and other long-term working-class residents of the United States.

,

pay taxes

,

contribute to the strength of our economy.”

“That would be a horrible place to go into [the next election]Padilla said. ‘When [Biden] Ran ahead

P

As president, he spoke of restoring the soul of the nation, staying true to our democratic values ​​and speaking on behalf of asylum seekers and refugees.”

“When you hear a lot of ideas being entertained, that’s definitely concerning,” Padilla said.