Republican Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, a leading conservative on immigration issues, blasted a bill by a fellow Republican aimed at strengthening U.S. borders as not going far enough.

The bill, sponsored by Texas Republican Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, would require the Department of Homeland Security to gain control of the nation's entire southwest border within five years and levies fines against U.S. Department of Homeland Security personnel who don't meet benchmarks for locking down the border. It also permanently deploys the Texas National Guard to the border.

Sessions said the expenditure on securing the border is useless as long as the president continues not enforcing the laws. He wants to see the Obama Administration approve the construction of a two-layer fence along 700 miles of the border.

The measure was approved in an 18-12 vote last week. McCaul said it is a stricter version of legislation he drafted with Democrats in 2013 but was never voted on. Democrats said the new measure was written without their input.

Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the committee's top Democrat, accused McCaul of acting in haste to retaliate against President Barack Obama for his executive orders last year, which protect millions of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. from deportation.

Sessions was recently named chairman of the Judiciary Committee's immigration subcommittee.

The Wall Street Journal this past Sunday reported Sessions was pushing against illegal and, in some cases, legal immigration. In a 25-page "immigration handbook" released earlier this month, Sessions argued an influx of low-wage workers depresses wages and job prospects of U.S. citizens.

McCaul's bill is the first negotiation between the House and the Senate on immigration legislation since the failed attempt in 2013 when the Senate passed a comprehensive bill that included a path to citizenship which the House refused to consider.