Culinary union members Rickelmy Deleon and Yvonne Gladney hand out U.S. flags to visitors Friday outside the Guardian Angel Cathedral on the Strip before a special Mass in support of immigrants. The Mass was organized by the union and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Las Vegas. Photo by K.M. Cannon. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee is flanked by Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., left, and Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., after the Senate failed to agree on an immigration bill. ASSOCIATED PRESS Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., speaks Friday as Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., listens after the Senate failed to agree on an immigration bill. ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON -- On Thursday, they compromised.

On Friday, they bickered.

And during the next two weeks, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and his Republican counterpart will be asked by voters and others why the Senate failed to pass an immigration bill.

Senators departed for a spring recess Friday at loggerheads on legislation aimed at beefing up the border and offering guest worker status and earned citizenship to the majority of the nation's 11 million illegal immigrants, including 150,000 in Nevada.

The Hagel-Martinez bill's demise came when 38 senators, all Democrats, voted Friday to choke off debate and proceed to a vote on the bill. That was 22 short of the number needed.

Reid voted to move the bill, while Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., voted against it, one of 60 senators -- 54 Republicans and six Democrats -- to do so. The bill's chief co-sponsors were Sens. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., and Mel Martinez, R-Fla.

Lawmakers in coming days probably will hear strong sentiments from activists on both sides stirred by the immigration debate.

On one side, proponents of a "get tough" approach to illegal immigrants welcomed the collapse of the bill, which they said would offer amnesty to lawbreakers and do little to shore up the border.

But Hispanic groups plan to take to the streets in Las Vegas and other cities over the next few days to push for immigrant rights.

And lawmakers might also hear from business and labor groups who see immigrants as vital to industries dependent on low-skilled labor, such as construction and tourism in Las Vegas.

Guest worker advocates expressed frustration with both parties Friday for failing to pass a bill that had broad bipartisan support.

"The Senate dropped the ball," said Tom Snyder, political director of the labor union UNITE HERE, which represents hotel and restaurant workers.

"It raises the question: Did they want a bill or did they want a food fight?" said Frank Sharry, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, a pro-immigration group. "We got a food fight."

The partisan mess was in sharp contrast to Thursday, when Reid and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn, trumpeted a breakthrough compromise that aimed to appeal to conservatives.

But Thursday evening the deal fell apart when party leaders could not agree on the rules for considering the legislation.

The Senate stood in limbo for hours while Reid and Frist, along with their deputies and other principal senators, met behind closed doors in a futile attempt to resolve the standoff.

Frist wanted to allow votes on up to 20 amendments to the bill, while Reid sought much fewer out of concern that they would be used to delay or gut the legislation.

Meanwhile, anticipating a fierce battle with the House when it comes time to reconcile the two chambers' immigration bills, Reid insisted that the Senate conferees be the 18 Judiciary Committee members.

The panel last month approved a measure similar to the Frist-backed compromise. The House bill focuses on strengthening border security.

Reid cited earlier occasions in which Republicans have excluded Democrats from important conference committee meetings. But Frist said it was "laughable" to think that a minority leader could dictate the majority party's committee appointees.

Senate leaders said they expected to resume work on the compromise after Congress returns April 24, but the next steps were unclear late Friday.

The bill could go to the Judiciary Committee for further deliberation or directly to the Senate floor, according to Senate aides. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the Judiciary Committee chairman, said he planned to work with staff members through the recess to lay the groundwork for further action.

Frist declined, however, to specify a timetable for deliberations by the full Senate, and some members expressed fears that the bill could be nudged aside by other issues, including a $106.5 billion supplemental appropriations bill that includes hurricane relief and money for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"It's going to be a tough uphill battle now," said Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., the Senate's assistant Democratic leader.

The Martinez-Hagel compromise embraced the basic concepts of a comprehensive bill that the Judiciary Committee had approved March 27 and a similar measure sponsored by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.

The bill would divide illegal immigrants into three categories.

Those in the country five years or longer would begin a route to citizenship if they learned English and paid taxes and fines.

Those in the country two to four years could apply for legal status after returning to a border-crossing for document processing.

The others would be subject to deportation.

The bill also would toughen enforcement and border security, boosting fines on the employers of illegal immigrants and adding 12,000 border patrol agents over the next five years.

But several Republicans, led by Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Jon Kyl of Arizona, insisted on numerous amendments. Among other things, they would deny legal status to immigrants who had committed crimes or skipped deportation hearings.

A verbal fight over the issue emerged during rival news conferences Friday.

Republicans were quick to blame Reid for the bill's failure.

Frist charged that Reid had placed a "stranglehold" on the legislation.

Ensign said, "It's really a shame that the Democrats shut the process down by not allowing us to offer very important amendments.

"The Democrats are definitely responsible for killing the bill," said Ensign, who sponsored an amendment that would have removed the citizenship provision.

Kennedy said he thought the Senate should have taken a vote Friday.

"I think there's always room for amendments," said Kennedy, a chief backer of immigration reform.

Ensign said he opposed the legislation as written because it would spur illegal immigration and take too long to secure the border.

Democrats said amendments would strip the legislation.

"The amendments were being offered by people who didn't want the bill," Reid said.

Durbin said Republicans were seeking to "amend the bill to death."

The bill's chief backers said that it probably had enough support, between 60 and 70 votes, to overcome attempts to weaken it.

The fear among immigration supporters is that by delaying or putting off a vote on the bill until after the two-week recess, lawmakers will have lost the will to overhaul immigration laws ahead of November's mid-term elections.

Friday's standoff seemed almost inevitable to advocacy groups.

"I don't think that I'm shocked that it fell apart overnight," said Pilar Weiss, political director of Culinary Local 226 in Las Vegas.

Weiss blamed Republicans for the delay. "I think that Senator Reid has been very clear all along what the deal breakers for him were," she said.

"I don't believe (the bill) will lose its momentum," said Van Heffner, president of the Nevada Hotel and Lodging Association.

But Sharry of the National Immigration Forum accused Reid of being unnecessarily inflexible.

"At first I thought that Senator Reid was very interested in the deal, but in the end, there wasn't a process that could move forward," Sharry said.

The bill's holdup was met with a shrug by supporters of a get-tough approach to illegal immigration.

The bill "would mean that we're no longer governed by the law but by mob rule," said Jim Gilchrist, founder of the Minuteman Project, which conducts citizen "patrols" of the border. The group has about 200 Nevada members, he said.

Reid spokeswoman Sharyn Stein said it would be up to the Republicans to decide whether to press ahead with immigration reform.

"We're not giving up on this, and we're still hoping we can get a bill," Stein said. "That will be the Republicans' decision."

Review-Journal wire services contributed to this report.