One Republican Senate staffer who’s been working on the immigration bill tells NRO how it all went down: Around Wednesday afternoon, it became clear that Sens. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) and Mel Martinez (R-FL) were preparing to offer their compromise bill as an alternative to the original Judiciary Committee bill. The compromise wasn’t really a compromise at all, because both bills were big on amnesty and weak on enforcement.

On Wednesday night, as soon as the floor was clear, Sens. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and Ben Nelson (D-NE) entered the Senate chamber and added their own substitution – an enforcement-only bill that called for the construction of a fence, the addition of more enforcement personnel and broader use of surveillance technology, among other measures. Under Senate rules, their substitution blocked the Hagel-Martinez bill from consideration.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-’08) wanted a vote on the Hagel-Martinez compromise, and so he sent the bill back to the Judiciary Committee with instructions that the committee strip out the Sessions-Nelson enforcement bill and add in the Hagel-Martinez compromise.

The committee complied, and sent the bill back to the floor with the changes Frist wanted. This morning, the Senate voted 38-60 against cloture on the Hagel-Martinez compromise, and 36-62 against cloture on the original Judiciary Committee bill – effectively killing both. The similar margins, the staffer says, “show you that the compromise didn’t get us very far.”