January 6, 2018

The Democrat-controlled Senate was nearing a make-or-break vote on a comprehensive immigration bill in June 2013 when a pair of Republican senators swooped in with an 11th-hour amendment aimed at clinching enough GOP support to avoid a filibuster.

A key provision: doubling the length of a new border “fence” between the United States and Mexico from 350 miles to 700 miles.

Democrats didn’t think such a barrier was necessary. Neither did the Obama White House. To them, the proposal seemed arbitrary — a random doubling of the size at the last minute for political purposes. In the end, though, all 54 Democrats in the Senate supported the provision in hopes of realizing a bigger goal — providing a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants.

Read more:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/a-giant-symbol-in-fight-over-trumps-wall-democrats-who-once-supported-a-border-barrier-now-oppose-it/2018/01/05/b6441602-f18f-11e7-b390-a36dc3fa2842_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-cards_hp-card-politics%3Ahomepage%2Fcard&utm_term=.5d7460d627c8