Politicians and candidates from across the political spectrum in Montana are seizing upon the crisis on the southern border in the lead up to the November election.  

While the focus in recent months has been on security, border and immigration policy are perennial issues for voters, said Lee Banville, a political analyst and director of the University of Montana School of Journalism. 

“I think that what we’ll see is that it's going to intensify,” Banville said. “You’re going to see an issue that … is really a complex thing turned into a black and white, easy issue.” 

Immigration and border policy resonate with voters, Banville said. While there is a dearth of polling on the issues in Montana, immigration has returned again and again as a central theme in elections in recent years. Candidates see it as a way to galvanize voters, he said. 

“People focus on the issues that move voters right now and it's easier to get people fired up about an issue like immigration policy than it is to get them to think about, like, low-income health care options,” Banville said. “One probably has more direct effect on people … but there's a difference between the issues that maybe affect us most directly versus the issues that fire us up and get us to go out and vote.” 

Migrant encounters with border patrol agents on the U.S.-Mexico border hit an all-time high in the waning days of 2023. There were nearly a quarter of a million encounters in December 2023 alone, according to U.S. Customs and Border Patrol. 

The surge prompted Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to declare his state under invasion and seize a section of the border near Eagle Pass from federal officials. In the Senate, lawmakers from both major parties began negotiating a bipartisan policy package aimed at ameliorating the crisis.  

But the bill, though endorsed by the National Border Patrol Council, was quickly declared dead on arrival. It failed to pass a procedural vote in the Senate on Feb. 7. Former President Donald Trump, the GOP frontrunner for 2024, blasted the package just days prior. 

“This Bill is a great gift to the Democrats, and a Death Wish for The Republican Party,” he wrote on Truth Social on Feb. 5. 

Democrats say Republicans are playing politics and vice versa, according to Banville. 

The Senate bill would have given the Biden administration emergency powers to shut down the border if migrant encounters with federal authorities hit 4,000 in a week. If migrant encounters hit 5,000 in a week, the border would have shut down automatically.

It included $20 billion for additional enforcement along the border, paying for thousands of more asylum officers and border patrol agents as well as hundreds of new asylum judges. It would have made it more difficult for migrants to apply for asylum if they crowded the border and it would have added new standards to qualify for asylum.

The legislation also included thousands more family-based and employment-based visas. 

Had it been passed, it would have represented the first significant action taken by Congress on immigration in decades, according to The Washington Post.

“PEOPLE UNDERSTAND the southern border is broken and they want us, the folks that serve in Washington. D.C., their representatives to the government, to do something about it,” said U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, the only Democrat in Montana’s congressional delegation, after the Feb. 7 vote. 

Tester, who is campaigning for reelection this year and voted in favor of the package, described Congress’ actions as hypocritical.  

The doomed border bill included many policies he supports, Tester said. The money designated for securing the southern border was critically important, he said, as were reforms to asylum law to prevent abuse and efforts to interdict fentanyl. 

“If this bipartisan bill … would have been passed, quite frankly the border would have been closed,” Tester said. 

Tester’s Republican counterpart, U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, voted against the legislation. He argued it lacked teeth and accused the Biden administration of planning to suspend the bill’s measures.

For Daines, the solution to the border crisis involves Biden wielding executive orders to finish the border wall, reinstate the “Remain in Mexico” policy and reinstate Title 42, Covid-era policies enacted by the Trump administration that allowed U.S. authorities to expel migrants back into Mexico while awaiting asylum hearings. 

The Biden administration ended the policy in 2021. 

“If the Democrats want to solve the problem, starting with Joe Biden, he needs to put in place the policies,” Daines said. 

Still, the Senate legislation that Daines voted against included funding for 900 new miles of border wall construction. 

And it included billions in aid to foreign governments, including Israel and Ukraine. Though previously a strong advocate of support for Ukraine, Daines said that priorities had shifted. 

“When we’re $35 trillion dollars in debt, we have to prioritize what needs to be done for our country,” Daines told the Inter Lake. 

As for the border, Daines said that Democrats are only talking about the issue because they know it is a political liability. 

“We finally saw Senate Democrats talking about this because they know it is a huge political problem for them … the reason you are starting to see senators like Jon Tester supporting this is because he is up for reelection,” Daines said. 

Tester, who has spent recent years working to stem the flow of illegal drugs like fentanyl across the southern border, argued the opposite. 

He described the failure to take action on the border, like voting down the Senate bill, as playing politics and said his constituents are tired of the antics in Washington, D.C.

“Unlike Sen. Daines and my opponent [Tim Sheehy] for that matter, I really do believe we need to secure the border immediately,” Tester told the Inter Lake. “... So talk is really cheap. I am disappointed that the junior senator and my other colleagues voted to keep the border open for another year. And that's the bottom line.” 

Sheehy did not respond to requests for an interview on his views on border and immigration policy. *

Kalispell City Councilor Sid Daoud, who is competing for Tester’s Senate seat as a Libertarian, said Congress is uninterested in tackling the problem. 

“The first thing I’ll let you know is that this issue is a dog whistle, whether you're left-leaning or right-leaning,” Daoud said. “The two big parties don't have a lot of incentive to actually change things because, right now, this issue is keeping their base in line with their own party.” 

Daoud would like to see immigrants cut off from access to social welfare programs. He would also like to see more asylum judge positions filled, as a lot of immigrants spend years working through the immigration courts while living on government welfare, he said. 

“I don’t think many people would say that the American dream includes social welfare to noncitizens,” Daoud said. 

LAST YEAR, the House of Representatives passed the Secure the Border Act of 2023, also known as H.R. 2, that included measures to expand the border wall and heavily restrict the ability to seek asylum. Every House Democrat voted against the bill. 

It was the job of the Senate to pick up H.R. 2, after it passed the House, and make amendments, not create entirely new legislation, according to Republican Congressman Ryan Zinke. 

“[Montana has] always been a border state. We haven’t been a southern border state until today,” Zinke said this week. “Look at the work forces on the ground … those people didn’t come from Spokane.” 

Zinke advocated for expanding the border wall, empowering border patrol agencies and ending “catch and release” policy as good proposals to implement on the border. 

Like Daines, though, Zinke said that Biden has the power to secure the border. 

“On the domestic side, it is the top priority. No nation can exist without borders. And to be clear the president of the United States … has the full authority to shut down the border,” Zinke said. 

Zinke’s Democratic rival, Missoula attorney Monica Tranel, argued that Congress must address the southern border.

There are three branches of government for a reason, said Tranel, who lost to Zinke in the 2022 election cycle by four points. 

Many of the policies Tranel proposed were included in the Senate border bill. Among those are investing in the path for legal citizenship and shutting down the border when it becomes overwhelmed. 

Tranel specifically pointed toward how the bill directed the border to close when the weekly amount of encounters surpassed predetermined marks. It had “real teeth,” she said. 

“What I want to see in the simplest form is that if people come here illegally, they should be sent back … but the process for legal immigration needs reform and repair,” Tranel told the Inter Lake. 

Republican Congressman Matt Rosendale called for a change in the Senate leadership — meaning Minority Leader Mitch McConnell — upon the release of the Senate bill. Rosendale said he took particular issue with the spending included in the legislation for items unrelated to the border. 

Rosendale highlighted three specific policies he would like to see on the border: continuing investments into the border wall and security system, redirecting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to begin raids and deportations on U.S. soil and reintroducing the “Remain in Mexico” policy. 

“We literally have millions of people released into our country … It's a huge, it's just a huge problem,” he said. 

PRESIDENT BIDEN is weighing taking executive action to address border security, according to multiple media outlets. Among the ideas up for consideration are barring migrants from seeking asylum between ports of entry, developing a system for closing the border when migrant crossings hit a certain level and tightening the “credible fear standard” to make it harder for migrants to pass an initial asylum screening. 

Regardless of the president’s moves, Montana voters can expect to continue to see border discussion throughout the election year. If anything, according to political analyst Banville, the discussion will probably intensify. 

“I think [campaigning] will do very little to help fix the issues that are existing that are very real along the southern border,” Banville said. “But the campaign isn’t about what policy we should choose, it’s more of choosing who should represent us when deciding on that policy.”

Reporter Kate Heston can be reached at kheston@dailyinterlake.com or 758-4459.

* UPDATE: A spokesperson for Tim Sheehy's campaign provided the following statement after this news article was first published.

"To end the crisis at the border, we must remove the incentives for illegal immigration and bring back President Trump’s successful policies of Remain in Mexico and ending catch and release. Most of all, we need a new generation of leaders who will finally get the job done and put America First by sealing our border, finishing the wall and ending illegal immigration once and for all."