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Your post has many at best misleading statements and characterizations. I'll try to discuss just one I'm familiar with in some depth:
tl;dr: Both of these claims are simply wrong. No, it doesn't end "catch and release," i.e., quickly releasing people waiting for their immigration hearings. There is a whole section which describes catch-and-release, i.e., "non custodial removal proceedings" and funds it with billions a year under "alternatives to detention" expansion. Not only does it not end it, it mandates supervision under "alternatives to detention" in situations like an adult border migrant who meets initial screening criteria. And it doesn't even actually require "alternative to detention" supervision either.
For context, Congress in the mid 1990s amended the Immigration and Naturalization Act to make release of people encountered at the border more difficult. Border migrants were detained unless there was a specific showing on an individual basis their release was necessary due to "urgent humanitarian reasons or any significant public benefit" which historically going back decades meant a high bar almost all would fail to meet. Border patrol encountering border migrants had two options; normal removal proceedings or an expedited removal process. Border migrants in either process were to be detained until their hearing, unless they met the strict requirements for release waiting for their process. Trump enforced this strict requirement for release in the US (release on parole) or they could be released and away the removal process outside the country (remain in Mexico). This policy under current law was upheld.
The Biden administration in July 2021 decided to issue an order which essentially required the border patrol to release border migrants under section 212(d)(5)(A) of the Immigration and Naturalization Act (which they did within ~15-30 minutes, see Florida v. US). "Urgent humanitarian reasons or any significant public benefit" meant almost all migrants would now qualify for release. Florida sued and won, the policy was knocked down. The Biden administration came out with a nearly identical policy two months later. Florida sued and won. This went up on appeal and was affirmed at the circuit level. The Biden admin continued along with essentially the same policy and same result anyway.
So, let's move on to this bill. The bill expands release on parole under the expedited removal process. It adds new categories, it adds new discretionary authority to the DHS secretary, it makes "urgent humanitarian reason" into an essentially subjective criteria of the DHS secretary. Instead of formalizing the strict language which was used for decades, it sets out that precedent as its own exception and then adds discretionary authority to the secretary of the DHS to determine what that separate vague language means (a DHS which has argued in court that climate change may satisfy this language). It doesn't even close the one "catch and release" door the Biden admin is currently abusing!
The most damning part for any claim the bill ends "Catch and Release" is that it adds a (b) subsection to section 235 which creates "Provisional Noncustodial Removal Proceedings." Under 235 (b), the DHS Secretary has broad discretion based on undefined "operational circumstances" to require any migrant making an asylum claim to go through this process and mandate release. Unlike the expedited removal proceeding under current law which mandates detention of most asylum claimants, 235 (b) mandates noncustodial supervision under the expanded "alternatives to detention" program which means they will be released. And even then, "alternatives to detention" supervision is not actually mandatory either! The bill allows mandatory release of any border migrant under 235(b) for up to 90 days before any determination whatsoever is completed (currently, the CBP is required to perform an asylum screen before any action is taken). It still gets worse! Any border migrant who failed to be given a "protection determination" within 90 days - there are over 1,000,000 cases on backlog for just initial "fear" screenings before AOs right now - are released and eligible for work permits immediately, and automatically passed on to end review. Wow! This subsection essentially codifies broad swathes of the Biden administration "Asylum Officer" regulatory scheme which is currently in court and likely to lose also.
It is honestly ridiculous to claim this "Ends 'Catch and Release.'" It does no such thing; a hostile administration will not only not be required to stop catch and release, but they're given new tools to justify catching and releasing any migrant found on the border and even mandate it in certain situations!
If you want to argue otherwise, please tell me the exact part of the bill which actually forces a hostile administration, one which has for years ignored court rulings by making slight changes to catch-and-release policies, to stop releasing border migrants into the United States? "We're not doing catch and release, we catch them and then quickly release them under an expanded program which releases them but under government supervision, but also we don't have to do that either" isn't ending catch and release.
The only way this bill ends "catch and release" under a hostile administration is that the Asylum Officers stamp "approved" on every asylum claim and let out the new residents with automatic work permits into the United States.
One, illegally allow in tens of millions of people into the United States; two, trick the (hopefully) absolute morons in the GOP to pass a "compromise bill" which allows a hostile administration to staff a army of bureaucrats which can more quickly adjudicate asylum claims under a "more strict" standard (it's really not) than one which could be adopted by executive fiat and then quickly stamp "approved" on large percentages of the illegally released people who now get automatic work permits. And it would have worked if it wasn't for that stupid Trump who is just so bad, doesn't care about immigration or the country, and opposes it because he just doesn't want Biden to get a win. And thank God for that.
Passing that bill would have been unfathomably stupid strategy to reduce illegals and unfathomably stupid politics at the same time. GOP voters and supporters will recognize this bill as a deep betrayal and failure and will refuse to show up in the 2024 election guaranteeing a Trump loss as well as losses in the House and Senate. It also gives your opposition a win on their worst subject and gives slight truth to media mouthpieces to claim Democrats addressed their worst subject. "Well, I tried" but am still horribly failing and polling about the topic is horrible is in fact much worse than "I got landmark immigration bill through Congress" in terms of electoral strategy.
This bill is so unfathomably stupid and/or duplicitous, I wouldn't be surprised if it actually did come from the desk of a GOP Senator. Yet another example of "is the GOP this dumb or this smart?"
Literally none of this matters.
Almost all illegals are eventually released or make it into the interior. That was true even with Trump’s remain-in-Mexico policy because there is no wall and Trump is no closer to getting Congress to build one than he was this time in 2016. That is to say even migrants turned back eventually make it into the interior, where they’re never deported unless they commit serious violent crime and ICE arrests and deports them which of course only happens to a tiny minority of illegals migrants, and even in those cases most return illegally.
Because of 1 (a fundamental issue which, again, Trump has zero realistic plan to fix), the only difference between handing every migrant a green card (or, hell a passport) and not doing so is one generation. Every child of every single illegal migrant in the US born on US soil is a full citizen of the United States. That’s the trick with ‘amnesty’; it means nothing, because the demographic impact is guaranteed in any case. Birthright citizenship is the ultimate incentive for illegal immigration. Talk about “work permits” is hilarious; their sons and daughters have the same rights and privileges as you.
So, yeah. The only two things that would do “more” than this bill would be a meaningful end to most illegal inflows (impossible without transnational coast to coast impenetrable wall, and even then asylum seekers could just come legally and overstay visas if they could get them) and an end to birthright citizenship (almost certainly impossible without constitutional amendment). So this magic alternative to this bill (which again, would allow a GOP administration to take minor incremental steps to somewhat reduce inflows) does not exist. There is no plan, there never was, and Trump killed it because he didn’t want to give Biden what he felt was some kind of ‘win’, whatever the cost.
It's telling your standard for an alternative for this terrible bill, which you continue to essentially ignore any specifics of and vaguely handwave that it would reduce immigration or even if it doesn't under a hostile administration it would arm a friendly one to do more than is currently possible without making a specific argument for how it would ever do that, is that:
it has to "meaningful end to most illegal inflows"? This bill doesn't do any of that. It doesn't get close to that. It doesn't remotely address birth-right citizenship or any of that. It's even easier to legally (even if we assume a hostile admin would follow the law which they have demonstrably not for over 3 decades) release migrants into the US interior and it provides billions in public dollars to help them do it in addition to providing billions to the web of NGOs which facilitate the migrant inflow straight to the US border. It provides money to finish the Border wall, something which Trump made meaningful progress with, but the bill allows border migrants to knock on the door of the wall and be let in the US legally and doesn't even require a hostile admin to build the wall anyway. The bill may as well be called "Pay Democrats to Import Foreigners Act of 2023."
this bill doesn't even sniff the standard you have set out for what Trump? or whoever must deliver for you to even consider it "a plan," and in doing so you're just revealing this is some isolated demand for rigor for Trump, who is like evil and the worst or whatever, or other plans for reasons we're just left to speculate about
as if the GOP for the last 50 years has been even equal let alone better in addressing this issue; the problem was Democrats figured out Republicans are absolute clowns, called their bluff when they realized the GOP isn't actually going to do anything, and so they illegally imported 15m people in <4 years and the GOP couldn't even muster the fortitude to stop funding it; immigration and a wall wouldn't have even been a serious topic of the 2016 election if Trump didn't make it that way
for those who want to reduce immigration, if this bill is "the plan," then they may as well just admit total defeat and slam the acceleration pedal to the floor because this bill is terrible
I’m not aware of any estimates that the total number of migrants in the last four years has been that high. Most estimates seem to be 6-7 million including illegals.
The estimates giving 6-7 million tend to be based around only CBP encounters, minus explusions/deportations, plus the CBP's own estimate for 'gotaways' or undetected illegal immigration. This isn't the absolute lowest-bound possible -- some number are repeat offenders -- but it's a very low estimate, especially when the CBP is also claiming that its apprehension rate has remained stable from the lowest part of the Trump/COVID lull til today, and as immigration courts have been increasingly swamped.
((And, obviously, this excludes visa overstays.))
I don't think 15m is correct (and it might just be taken from a Trump claim), and most of the ways to get anywhere plausibly close to it depend on some questionable assumptions (eg, declaring some of the weirder refugee categorizations "illegally imported" even if it's not strictly speaking illegal for the immigrants themselves), but the Biden admin numbers are pretty hard to believe.
Are there any estimates from relatively unbiased sources that give a much higher number?
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