WASHINGTON A bipartisan compromise on immigration reform fell apart this week in the Senate as Republicans heeded former President Donald Trumps advice to kill it.

The deals demise showed Trumps power over Republicans, but it also continued a long-running pattern in immigration politics where a group of Republicans and Democrats strike a compromise, and then the GOP bails.

Lawmakers reached bipartisan agreements on immigration in 2006, 2013 and 2018, pairing pathways to citizenship for undocumented immigrants the thing Democrats wanted with border security for Republicans. Each time, Republicans walked away decrying amnesty for people who had entered the country illegally.

This time, the deal changed. Republicans would get tougher border security, including provisions Democrats had criticized during the Trump administration as unacceptable, without agreeing to a pathway to citizenship. Instead, they would agree to a package of military aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. Again, Republicans negotiated the deal and then sprinted away from it.

Why does this keep happening? One reason may be that advocating for stricter immigration policy, regardless of the actual results, is just plain easier than demanding a fairer and more just process for people who are not U.S. citizens, said Jorge Loweree, managing director of programs and strategy at the American Immigration Council.

Youre preying on peoples fears, Loweree said, and if you can do that successfully, theres very little that can be done to bring somebody back from that.

In 2006 and 2013, the Senate approved bills that would have beefed up border enforcement while creating a pathway to citizenship for as many as 11 million undocumented immigrants, only for the legislation to stall out in a Republican-controlled House.

For a brief moment in 2018, it seemed like Donald Trump wanted to break the cycle. He invited Republicans and Democrats to the White House and called for a bipartisan compromise on immigration, one that would address border security and create a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers, or undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.

Im appealing to everyone in the room to put the country before party, and to sit down and negotiate and to compromise, and lets see if we can get something done, Trump said at the start of the meeting , adding that he was open to comprehensive immigration reform a concept Republicans loathed.