WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats were plunged into political crisis, especially splintered on immigration and border security, after their thorough defeat last year in an election in which President Donald Trump made hard-line immigration action a centerpiece of his campaign.
That may be changing.
From New York to California, Democratic lawmakers are talking more about their immigration plans, showing up at detention centers to conduct oversight on the conditions and at times getting into confrontations with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. It’s putting a spotlight on Trump’s agenda to deport millions of people, suggesting Democratic lawmakers are feeling emboldened to push back. Still, they have a ways to go before advancing a unified agenda of their own.
Yet their actions show how the ground is shifting in the American immigration debate — away from border policies to questions about the future for millions of people who are already in the country without permanent legal status.
“Is there an opening for Democrats? Yeah,” Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democrat who has pushed his party for years to emphasize border security, told The Associated Press. “Say strong on border security, focus on criminals and all that, but do not deport the folks with good records.”
Democrats are ramping up visits to detention centers
Across the country, Democrats have shown up — sometimes unannounced — at immigration detention centers to check on reports of unsanitary and unsafe conditions and draw attention to the Trump administration’s actions. Congressional Democrats have sued the Department of Homeland Security for blocking them from making unannounced site visits, saying they have a right to do so under federal law.
“Transparency matters. Oversight matters. Accountability matters,” said Rep. Joe Neguse earlier this month after he and other Colorado Democrats visited a detention center in Aurora, near Denver. “You certainly can expect to see the Democratic members of Colorado’s House delegation continue to lean in on all fronts.”
It’s a change of focus for some within the Democratic Party even from the beginning of the year, when many lawmakers were arguing that the party needed a new approach on immigration that emphasized stronger enforcement. Some Democrats even helped advance several Republican bills aimed at migrants who are accused of crimes.
Yet as the Republican president’s deportation efforts ramped up this year and ensnared people without criminal backgrounds who were caught up in the fervor to remove noncitizens, Democrats began to mobilize.
“Hardworking, middle-class individuals — all us just looking to earn the American dream,” said Rep. Lou Correa, a California Democrat, referring to Alejandro Barranco, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran whose father was arrested by U.S. Border Patrol agents in southern California, where he lived for decades.
Barranco was at the Capitol for a July event organized by Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee where they decried Donald Trump’s administration as “unaccountable, unlawful and unconstitutional.”
Republicans hold firm even as public opinion shifts
Still, Republicans believe they continue to have the upper hand in the immigration debate. They are already pointing to Trump’s success in deterring migrants from coming to the U.S. border with Mexico.
“We’ve never seen such — first of all — a horrible situation with the border as we saw under President Biden and the Democrats, only to see all that reversed after the election. Now it’s one of the most secure southern borders we’ve had in years,” said Sen. Steve Daines, a Montana Republican.
Daines charged that Democrats are “rudderless, they’re out of ideas, and the ideas they do have are out of touch with where I think most Americans are at, particularly hardworking middle-class Americans and our Hispanic community as well.”
But there are signs that public support is slipping for Trump’s approach. An AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found in July that only 43% of U.S. adults said they approved of his handling of immigration, down slightly from the 49% who supported his work on the issue back in March.
A poll from Gallup that was circulated widely among Democrats that month found that almost 8 in 10 Americans say immigration is “a good thing” for the country, an increase from 64% a year ago and a high point in the nearly 25-year trend.
“I do think the American public is seeing this administration for what it is,” said Sen. Alex Padilla, a California Democrat.
“It’s not just targeting dangerous, violent criminals. The vast majority of people being arrested, being detained, being deported even, many without due process, have no criminal convictions, no violent history,” he added. “They’re actually people who the first Trump administration designated as essential at the outset of the COVID pandemic. So that cruel irony is not lost on people.”
There’s still a search for consensus
Democrats are trying to seize the moment with a flurry of proposals on immigration. Broadly, the proposals move away from policies that have allowed large numbers of migrants to enter the country, such as asylum and temporary protected status, in favor of expanding visas and other means of legal immigration.
The Center for American Progress, a leading liberal policy organization, has released an immigration framework that starts with the imperative to “safeguard America’s security.” The New Democrat Coalition, a moderate group of more than 100 House Democrats, also released a plan that calls for toughened border security while “expanding safe, legal avenues for immigration.”
“What we really need to do is overall fix the broken immigration system. It doesn’t mean that we can’t have border security.” Sen. Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat, said at a town hall this month. “We have crossings at almost zero, and I think there should be credit given to the president for that, but why not use this opportunity to pass immigration reform?”
Gallego, who won a Senate seat in Arizona last year while Trump also carried the state, has released a plan that calls for tightening restrictions on asylum and pushing other countries in the region to accept asylum seekers.
Democratic leaders in Congress, meanwhile, are still forming their own plans as they try to win over more liberal members who are concerned about changing the asylum system.
Other Democrats are looking for more immediate ways to aid immigrants who have been in the country for years but face an uncertain new reality under the Trump administration.
Padilla said he hopes Republicans can get behind his legislation that would open a pathway for a green card to people in the country under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, and others who have lived in the country for at least seven years.
He said Republicans are starting to hear the public backlash to the Trump administration’s handling of deportations “and maybe think differently, so we’ll see if now’s the time.”
