President Biden is scheduled to visit the southern border on Thursday following the Senate's failure to pass a bipartisan border security deal earlier this month. The chief executive has considered executive action to curb the ongoing crisis. (Getty Images)
Republicans aggressively criticized a border security deal when it was released earlier this month, leading it to die in the Senate. The long-awaited bill would have allotted $20 billion to immigration enforcement to hire asylum claim officers and Border Patrol agents, provided millions toward border wall reinforcement and given more authority to the president and the administration to close the border.
The failure to pass the deal led Biden to consider executive action to tackle the ongoing border crisis.
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"The Republicans are being obstinate, obdurate, in their opposition to legislation passing," Sen. Ed Markey told Fox News. "That's sad."
"To the extent to which now the president has to contemplate actions that he can take using his inherent authority, then I await what proposal that he has, but it's only reluctantly, in the absence of a bipartisan approach that the president wanted to see put in place in the first place," the Massachusetts Democrat said.
The Biden administration has overseen a record number of migrant encounters at the southern border. (Fox News)
"President Biden's committed to doing what we have to do to both protect national security and reform our broken immigration system," Sen. Chris Coons told Fox News. The Delaware Democrat added that he was disappointed the bipartisan border security deal failed, but said Biden should step in.
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Executive action "may be the only option that President Biden has," he said. "It will not have a strong legal standing. It may be immediately suspended in the courts, but we have to do something to make sure we do not have a national security threat at our southern border."
On Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden had no plans to issue executive action during his Thursday visit to Brownsville, Texas. She said the best solution to fix the "broken immigration system" would have been if Republicans had "moved forward with the bipartisan deal that came out of the Senate."
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Senators agreed the southern border crisis needs to be addressed, but some lawmakers felt it's Congress' responsibility to act. (Alejandro Cegarra/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Sen. John Fetterman similarly criticized Republicans.
"Our party showed up to support [the deal] and address the border and one party walked away from it," the Pennsylvania Democrat said. "I do believe we have a crisis at the border."
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He said he didn't know whether Biden should take executive action.
"We need a deal, and I know the president believes as I do that we need to address the border," Fetterman said. "We are going to address it."
Ramiro Vargas contributed to the accompanying video.
Megan Myers is an associate producer/writer with Fox News Digital Originals.
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