Exclusive — Mike Lee: ‘Increasingly Likely’ Pro-Migration Border Bill Doesn’t Make It Past First Cloture Vote

 It is “increasingly likely” that the pro-migration border bill does not make it through the first cloture vote, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) said during an appearance on Breitbart News Daily, explaining that the measure is smoke and mirrors at best and “inviting more illegal immigration at worst.”

“I’m very confused by why they thought it was a good thing to put this border emergency authority in there,” Lee said when detailing the bill itself.

“Because right at first, it sounds like — and it was sold — as a good thing. It was sold as something that would sort of replicate Title 42 but without any requirement of a public health issue, like a pandemic,” he said, concluding that it was actually smoke and mirrors at best and “inviting more illegal immigration at worst.”

“So the idea that you’re going to not create the authority to quote unquote, shut down the border … you can’t even do it as a discretionary act until you get 4,000 migrant encounters per day, and that it doesn’t become mandatory … until it gets to 5,000,” he said, which is “perplexing.”

“Then you get to the fact that, well, we’re going to limit the number of days a year in which it can be invoked — 270 in the first year, 235 in the second, 180 days in the third year,” Lee explained.

“Add all of that to the fact that the President and the Homeland Security Secretary, can, as a matter of their own discretion, waive out a lot of these days. And you get to the point where I’m not sure that does anything other than appearing to provide some means by which you can secure the border,” he said, concluding it does nothing except “cause the drug cartels smuggling human traffic into this country, and along with it fentanyl to kill every American multiple times, you’re gonna cause them to schedule their shipments of people,” he said.

At this point, as more Republican senators are coming out against it, Lee said it is very possible that it will fail on the first cloture vote.