I haven’t had time yet to read the bill myself but Gabe Malor has. He’s smart, a straight shooter, and knows his immigration law. (He’s an occasional guestblogger for us too.) I trust his reading — and his reading is that once Senate Dems dig into the substance of it, they’ll vote no across the board.

Of course, they were going to vote no across the board regardless. But this ought to extinguish even faint hope that McConnell will pick up a few centrists like Joe Manchin or Doug Jones.

The likely dealbreakers come from the new asylum provisions. Trump’s proposal isn’t actually a straightforward “BRIDGE Act for wall” swap, it turns out. It also attempts to limit the asylum application process in certain ways for some, notably minors from Central America. Gabe:

Asylum is a form of relief for people who are being persecuted in their home countries and the authorities there are unable or unwilling to protect them (or are the source of the persecution). You can't condition asylum on people remaining in the place where they are persecuted. — Friendly Gabriel Malor (@gabrielmalor) January 22, 2019

The idea is that alien minors will leave their home countries and then reside in one of the other central american states while their asylum application is pending. Unfortunately, most Central American states suffer from the same sorts of persecutory harm. It's unrealistic. — Friendly Gabriel Malor (@gabrielmalor) January 22, 2019

It's a very odd bill. Sure, you can have a lawyer present bc you're a UAC (meaning no parent or guardian in the U.S. capable of taking care and custody). But, hah hah, having no parent or guardian present in the U.S. capable of taking care/custody disqualifies you from asylum. pic.twitter.com/z8A0eD3OWa — Friendly Gabriel Malor (@gabrielmalor) January 22, 2019

Senate Dems will oppose that if only for fear that giving an inch to the White House now on how people apply for asylum will encourage Trump to try to take a mile later. Remember that district-court decision in the Ninth Circuit that led to a brief squabble between Trump and John Roberts over “Obama judges”? That case was about whether people who cross the border illegally instead of at a lawful port of entry should be eligible for asylum. Yes, said the court, they’re eligible — because that’s what federal law says. Trump didn’t like that. His effort to get Mexico to house asylum applicants while they await a ruling is also part of this battle. POTUS recognizes, correctly, that the asylum process can be abused by immigrants who are seeking economic opportunity rather than freedom for prosecution by gaining them “temporary” access to the country. He’s looking for ways to deprive them of that access.

And precisely because Democrats want that access to continue, even if it means illegals disappearing into the U.S. via catch and release while they await their bogus “asylum” hearing, they’ll hold the line against any attempt to change the process via legislation in even a very specific case like the one Gabe identifies.

But there’s more:

The bill also says an asylum application is frivolous if it is untimely. But timeliness depends, in part, on a fact-intensive examination of changed circumstances affecting eligibility or extraordinary circumstances related to the delay. pic.twitter.com/plqu2nqZo7 — Friendly Gabriel Malor (@gabrielmalor) January 22, 2019

The consequence for filing an application found to be frivolous is permanent ineligibility for any benefits under the INA. It would be one thing if timeliness had a clear-cut line, but it doesn't. It ends up a judgment call, and oh, BTW, the Act makes it unreviewable. pic.twitter.com/tWTZ5YrreV — Friendly Gabriel Malor (@gabrielmalor) January 22, 2019

Imagine seven Senate Dems crossing the aisle in the name of bipartisanship and good faith by voting for a White House bill to end the shutdown, then having the left find out that they just handed enormous new power to the courts to deem asylum applications “frivolous.”

Then there’s this, which appears to be more of a drafting error but again won’t help sell the bill to Dems. “CAM” is “Central American minor”:

But if you're a CAM outside the U.S. and a day under 18 on the day of enactment, you then become ineligible for asylum AT ALL the next day because the service centers cannot grant asylum to people unless they're under 18. pic.twitter.com/yp7jwXvfEz — Friendly Gabriel Malor (@gabrielmalor) January 22, 2019

It's not a terrible funding/wall/temp DACA/temp TPS bill as far as those things go, but it's got these two terrible poison pills—the CAM ban and the frivolous app reform—appended to it. https://t.co/epvtUWB7rS — Friendly Gabriel Malor (@gabrielmalor) January 22, 2019

Here’s the question. Why would the White House include de facto poison pills in their own bill? A poison pill typically happens in cases where a bill enjoys support from a fragile bipartisan coalition; an opponent of the bill will offer an amendment that’ll appeal for ideological reasons to some supporters *and* some opponents. If the amendment passes, the coalition shatters and the bill collapses. The provisions Gabe describes have that feel, that maybe the White House figured Tom Cotton and a few other border hawks would need sweeteners to lock up their votes, but it’s guaranteed to alienate the centrist Dems whose votes are essential to passage. All I can figure is that Trump knew going in that he’d never get seven Democrats to vote for it and so didn’t really bother to try. Better to make sure all Republicans are on board by making the bill more hostile to asylum than to soften it by pandering for Dem votes that probably aren’t coming no matter what.