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CREDIT: AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., center, accompanied by House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer of Md., left, and Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Fla., arrive for a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, March 26, 2015, to talk about the "continuation of efforts to educate individuals and families about the president's immigration executive actions." (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

2013 marked the year that real momentum was building toward passing a comprehensive immigration reform bill that would put millions of undocumented immigrants on a pathway to citizenship. The Senate approved a bipartisan bill in June 2013, igniting optimism that Congress might actually create a long-term solution to a politically charged problem. House leadership even expressed some interest in prioritizing the issue in 2014.

But that didnt happen. Today, the prospect of putting undocumented immigrants on some sort of pathway to legal status has never seemed less viable. GOP presidential candidates are running on virulently anti-immigrant platforms. And Republicans in the Senate are introducing legislation to make it easier to arrest immigrants for deportation proceedings.

A new documentary from FRONTLINE and Independent Lens set for release Tuesday night on PBS asks one simple question: What went wrong?

Filmmakers Shari Robertson and Michael Camerini present a fly-on-the-wall look at how bipartisan lawmakers almost pulled together to pass an immigration reform bill between 2013 and 2015 and how the bill ultimately dead-ended in the Republican-controlled House.

Immigration Battle follows Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) as he worked behind the scenes with Republican congressional leaders and the White House to write a bill that would neither be too lenient on undocumented immigrants and nor too aligned with President Obama, whom many House Republicans do not wish to work with.

Perhaps contrary to conventional wisdom, Robertson and Camerini conclude that Republicans werent the only one to blame for the ultimate downfall of the immigration reform bill. There is no easy villain, Camerini, joined on a phone interview with Robertson, told ThinkProgress. Its not an easy Republicans are bad movie.

House Speaker John Boehners (R-OH) confusing aboutface to vote on a set of immigration reform principles that would grant legal status to undocumented immigrants was his way of inoculating, testing the waters, drawing people out to see if they had a way forward, Camerini said.

The documentary pinpoints at least two turning points that help explain why House Republican members have since embraced more immigration-restrictionist bills.

First, former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) was defeated by the underfunded Tea Party darling Dave Brat, who ran on an opposition campaign to immigration reform. And then, an increase of Central American children who showed up at the southern U.S.-Mexico border appeared to trigger some House Republicans who otherwise would have supported a whip count to bring up an immigration bill to back down from supporting any immigration reform bills, which had suddenly become more politically toxic.

The window for action is always short, its almost like a magical alignment of the stars and two enormous meteors came through, Robertson told ThinkProgress. Those two things you can call them random occurrences no one expected either one.

The film makes the case that Democratic lawmakers played a role, too. Republicans turned their backs on immigration reform in part because Democratic leadership and the White House believed that House Republicans would take on a more conservative bill than the Senate did.

They made a strategic decision that I think everybody would say is a strategic error, Camerini said. There was a bipartisan deal in the House early and by killing it, they made the road much harder and much longer.

Ones own party can be an enemy because its such a useful political issue to blame the other side, Robertson added. People who want to get it done fear their own parties using it as a political issue almost more than they do the other side.

Now, the promise of passing comprehensive immigration reform is little more than a memory as Republicans have moved sharply in the opposite direction. On Tuesday, the Senate is preparing to vote on whether to consider a bill to crack down on sanctuary cities, which are areas that have elected not to turn over undocumented immigrants to federal law enforcement.

This vile legislation might as well be called The Donald Trump Act,' Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid said on the floor on Monday. Like the disgusting and outrageous language championed by Donald Trump, this legislation paints all immigrants as criminals and rapists.

Camerini acknowledged that its hard to distinguish between bills which are theater and bills which are real as House members take hardline stances to impress their constituents. Thats why he wanted to focus on a piece of proposed legislation that seemed like it had a real shot.

This is the story of a real [bill] one that got really, really close, he said.

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'Immigration Battle' Answers The Question Of How ...