U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, flanked by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, left, and Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, speaks during a news conference to support a border security bill on Wednesday, May 22, 2024. The bill failed on a procedural vote Thursday. (Photo by Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate failed Thursday to advance a border security bill as both parties seek to hone their messages on immigration policy in the runup to November’s elections.

The Senate bill failed to advance on a 43-50 procedural vote. The chamber already rejected the measure as part of a broader foreign aid package earlier this year. The bill, negotiated with the White House and a bipartisan trio of senators in the hopes of winning broad appeal, would have overhauled immigration law for the first time in more than 30 years.

Two of the border deal’s chief Senate negotiators, Oklahoma Republican James Lankford and Arizona independent Kyrsten Sinema, voted against advancing the measure Thursday, protesting what they said was an unserious process focused on political optics. The bill’s third major sponsor, Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy, voted in favor.

The procedural vote to advance to debate on the bill came as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer aimed to contrast Democrats’ approach to immigration policy with Republicans’ ahead of the November elections. The issue continues to rise as a top concern for voters and remains a core campaign theme for the GOP and its presumptive presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump.

Both chambers are readying other votes seemingly aimed at highlighting election themes.

The Democratic-led Senate is teeing up votes as early as next month on access to contraceptives, and protections for in vitro fertilization, or IVF, as Democrats have continued to campaign on the issue of reproductive rights.

The Republican-controlled House is moving forward with immigration related legislation, such as barring noncitizens from voting in federal elections, something that is rare and already illegal, as the GOP continues to highlight its disagreements with the White House over immigration policy.

Shortly after the Senate vote, President Joe Biden in a statement said Senate Republicans “put partisan politics ahead of our country’s national security.”

“Congressional Republicans do not care about securing the border or fixing America’s broken immigration system,” he said. “If they did, they would have voted for the toughest border enforcement in history.”

Losing support

The border security bill, S.4361, received fewer votes Thursday as a standalone bill than it had as part of the larger foreign aid package in February, when it failed on a 49-50 procedural vote. Sixty votes are needed to advance bills in the Senate.

The bill did not get all Democrats on board, which Schumer acknowledged earlier this week was a possibility.

“We do not expect every Democrat or every Republican to come out in favor of this bill,” Schumer said on the Senate floor Tuesday. “The only way to pass this bill – or any border bill – is with broad bipartisan support.”

But the bill failed to attract that broad support, losing backing even from Democrats who’d voted for the foreign aid package.

New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker said in a Wednesday statement that while he voted for the larger package in early February – mostly because it included critical aid to Ukraine – he would not do so this time around because the bill was too restrictive.

“I will not vote for the bill coming to the Senate floor this week because it includes several provisions that will violate Americans’ shared values,” Booker said. “The proposed bill would exclude people fleeing violence and persecution from seeking asylum and instead doubles down on failed anti-immigrant policies that encourage irregular immigration.”

‘Another cynical, political game’

Democratic senators who voted against moving the bill forward included Alex Padilla and Laphonza Butler of California, Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Booker. Independents Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Sinema also voted against.

Sinema said she voted against advancing her own bill because she felt Democrats were using her bill to “point the finger back at the other party.”

“Yet another cynical, political game,” she said.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska was the only Republican to vote to advance the bill after Lankford voted against the bill he helped write.

Lankford said Thursday’s vote was “a prop.”

“Everyone sees this for what it is,” he said. “It is not an actual effort to make law, it is an effort to do political messaging.”

Padilla, who voted against the larger package, said on the Senate floor Thursday that he was disappointed Democrats were voting on the bill again because it did not address the root causes of migration or create lawful pathways to citizenship for children brought into the U.S. without authorization known as Dreamers, farmworkers, and noncitizens who have been in the country for decades.

He urged other Democrats to vote no.

“The proposal before us was initially supposed to be a concession, a ransom to be paid to Republicans to pass urgent and critical aid to Ukraine,” Padilla said. “What’s this concession for now? It’s hard to swallow.”

Senate Republicans accused Democrats of bringing the bill as a political stunt.

“One thing the American people don’t have to wonder about is why Washington Democrats are suddenly champing at the bit to convince their constituents that they care about border security,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said on the Senate floor Thursday. “(Americans) know the solution is not cynical Senate theater.”

Biden called McConnell and House Speaker Mike Johnson on Monday night to ask them to vote for the bill, but both Republican leaders rejected that appeal.

First vote

Lankford, Sinema and Murphy introduced the bill earlier this year, optimistic that months of bipartisan negotiations could lead to the first immigration policy overhaul in decades.

But Trump opposed the measure, and after those senators released the legislative text, House Republicans said they would fall in line with the former president. Senate Republicans then walked away from the deal they had said would be needed in order for passage of a supplemental foreign aid package to Ukraine, Israel and the Indo-Pacific region.

The sweeping border security bill would have raised the bar for migrants claiming asylum, clarified the White House’s parole authority, ended the practice of allowing migrants to live in U.S. communities as they await their asylum hearings, and given Biden the executive authority to close the southern border when asylum claims reached high levels, among other things. 

Dueling messages

The day leading up to Thursday’s vote, Senate Democrats and Republicans held dueling press conferences on the bill.

Democrats, including Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow, argued that the bill negotiated earlier in the year would address the fentanyl crisis by providing new scanning technology at ports of entry and increasing staffing for custom agents.

Stabenow said she’s tired of Senate Republicans saying that “‘somebody should do something about the border,’” and that Thursday’s vote would give them an opportunity to address the southern border.

She was joined by Democratic Sens. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Brian Schatz of Hawaii and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, who talked about how many people in their states had died from fentanyl overdoses.

Republicans in their press conference argued that Democrats were holding a second vote to protect vulnerable incumbents in competitive races in Montana, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

“It is an election-year political stunt designed to give our Democratic colleagues the appearance of doing something about this problem without doing anything,” Tennessee GOP Sen. Marsha Blackburn said Wednesday.

She was joined by Republican Sens. Roger Marshall of Kansas, Rick Scott of Florida, Eric Schmitt of Missouri, John Coryn of Texas, J.D. Vance of Ohio and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.

House opposition

Even if the border security bill passed the Senate, it would have no chance in the House, where Johnson has vowed it will be dead on arrival.

The Louisiana Republican in a Wednesday press conference called the measure a messaging bill and said Schumer was “trying to give his vulnerable members cover.”

And not all House Democrats were on board with the bill negotiated out of the Senate.

The chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington state and the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Nanette Barragán of California, slammed Senate Democrats for putting forth the legislation and urged them to abandon the effort.

“We are disappointed that the Senate will once again vote on an already-failed border bill in a move that only splits the Democratic Caucus over extreme and unworkable enforcement-only policies,” they wrote in a statement.

“This framework, which was constructed under Republican hostage-taking, does nothing to address the longstanding updates needed to modernize our outdated immigration system, create more legal pathways, and recognize the enormous contributions of immigrants to communities and our economy.”

Latino Democrats also voiced opposition to the bill when it was first released because it contained many hard-line policies that were reminiscent of the Trump administration.

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(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

Dear President Biden, I am publicly writing to ask you to take executive action to protect American families, like mine, in danger of losing a loved one to deportation. Undocumented spouses and immediate family of U.S. citizens need your help now. 

We all get married for the same reasons: love and commitment. My wife Daisy and I got married in Las Vegas after moving here from California for a more affordable life. Daisy and I had talked about getting married for years but couldn’t afford a ceremony. On our wedding day in a Las Vegas chapel in 2019, I committed my life to Daisy in the eyes of God. It was a short, small ceremony but that was all we needed. Daisy wore a pretty little dress. It was a beautiful, pivotal moment for us.

I would have never imagined this special moment when I left the chaos and insecurity of Honduras many years before. I traveled 17 days to the US/Mexico border and then walked through the desert. I made this dangerous trip in search of a better life, that American success I had always heard about. And then, while I was packing gladiolas in a California greenhouse, I met a coworker who became the love of my life: Daisy. She is a beautiful, sweet person with a big and noble heart. Daisy shared my dream of creating a stable and loving home with children. I thought she was Mexican, but she told me she was born in the U.S. It surprised me because this could possibly open a new opportunity for me to see my parents back at home, who are getting old and frail and are constantly on my mind. We moved to Las Vegas together because she got offered a horticultural job growing tomatoes, chiles, and cucumbers, and life is more affordable here. 

From what I have heard and seen in the United States, it is a country where I can find safety and security. It’s said that in America, where you start out in life should not determine where you end up. Unlike my home country, Honduras, it seems like everyone who works hard in America can advance and participate fully in life here. But that has not been my experience so far. Even though my wife Daisy is a U.S. citizen, I am barred from changing my immigration status because of how I came here. I pay taxes but can’t get a Social Security number which makes it hard to find good stable work. I’ve done a little bit of everything: working in casino housekeeping, construction projects building up Las Vegas, and now landscaping and gardening. The pay is better for working outside but in the Nevada desert can be very difficult because of the extreme heat. 

Regardless of my hard work and the life we’re building together, I’m afraid of being separated from Daisy every day because I could easily be deported and prevented from returning. Any interaction with the police could mean an end to the life I’ve built here. But my situation is just one of an estimated one million undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens who face barriers in the current immigration system. 

This is why I’m asking you, President Biden, to take action. I understand that according to the law, you have the authority to expand eligibility for “parole in place” to include long-term undocumented spouses and immediate family of U.S. citizens. This would help me, and the immediate family (spouses, parents, children and siblings) of thousands of U.S. citizens, get work permits and have better opportunities and strengthen the economy. It would keep families like mine together. We came to this country to build a better life. No matter what, we will fight for our goals: to live in peace, free from danger, with the people we love. Help me, Mr. President, keep the vows I made in that Las Vegas chapel: to love and to cherish Daisy, till death do us part.

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"Coyotes" - smugglers of migrants - "are the worst problem that I have," said Robert Ardovino, who owns a bar and in New Mexico across the river from El Paso. (Photo: Marty Schladen/Ohio Capital Journal)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

SUNLAND PARK, NEW MEXICO — For Robert Ardovino, the surge of migrants to the southern border has been a constant problem for a while now, and he’s hardly alone.

Ardovino’s Desert Crossing — his restaurant/bar/retro-RV resort — has to be one of the coolest spots in the Southwest. Just across the Texas line from El Paso, it sits at the foot of Mt. Christo Rey, which separates the United States from Mexico, and from its elegant dining room, patrons look out across almost-limitless desert vistas.

Meanwhile, New Mexico’s 2021 marijuana legalization makes tiny Sunland Park the spot closest to any big Texas city where people can get legal weed. In January, the New York Times referred to it as “Little Amsterdam.”

But over the past few years, uninvited guests have been showing up. Lots of them.

During a Saturday afternoon conversation in late March, Ardovino leaned on an outdoor bathtub next to a 1957 Spartan Royal Manor travel trailer he rents out through Airbnb. As he spoke, dark figures popped up repeatedly on the mountain ridge behind him while a Border Patrol helicopter chopped and a surveillance plane droned overhead.

Ardovino said the people popping up were spotters checking to see if the coast was clear to send migrants over the border and down the mountain to smugglers, or “coyotes” who were waiting — often in Ardovino’s parking lot, and sometimes in his bar.

“The coyotes are the worst problem that I have,” Ardovino said, explaining that their presence made him worry for his patrons and his employees. “Because they, with those spotters, they’re telling the migrant group where to go and when to go. Everyone’s got cell phones, so they’re timing when and where to pick up. It’s all the time.”

Ardovino and many like him have been in the middle of the record-breaking surge to the border as COVID-era exclusions expired and migrants fled devastated economies and chaos in their home countries. But as politicians have rushed to paint the area as a lawless combat zone, he and others say those officials’ words and actions are doing little to help with the very real problems they’re experiencing on the ground, which have less to do with the migrants themselves than the smugglers trafficking them across the border.

Problems and politics

After reaching a record-setting peak of about 300,000 in December, U.S. Border Patrol encounters with migrants near the Mexican border have dropped to under 200,000 a month — lower than they were at this time in 2022 and 2023. But border crossings are still historically high and the government institutions constituted to deal with the arrival of undocumented migrants are overwhelmed.

While the border-enforcement budget was almost 19 times bigger in 2023 as it was in 1990, funding for asylum courts and other services for undocumented migrants has lagged. At the end of December, the backlog in immigration court rose above 3 million, with each judge facing a caseload of 4,500. That leaves asylum seekers in the United States waiting 4.3 years on average to have their cases heard.

As migrants have streamed in, agencies tasked with housing and feeding them have struggled to keep up. But the response in some states appears to be more about domestic politics than it is about dealing with the problem.

Texas, for example, is putting its police and state Guard between migrants and federal authorities despite the well-established principle that immigration enforcement is a function reserved for the federal government. It’s doing so on the specious legal claim that what’s happening along its border amounts to a military “invasion.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has conducted press events at the border hosting former President Donald Trump and attacking President Joe Biden. And Abbott has ordered the placement of miles of razor wire and buoys in the Rio Grande with nets attached below and serrated blades connecting them. Critics say the entire point is to injure or kill migrants.

Inflicting pain

Whether the measures are discouraging migrants from coming is unclear. But what is clear is that they’re increasing the body count at the border, said Beto O’Rourke, an El Paso resident who represented the city in Congress and on city council.

“Six years ago in the El Paso Border Patrol Sector — which includes West Texas, El Paso and all of southern New Mexico — six migrants died,” he said in March. “Last year, 149 migrants died. They’re women and children drowning. They’re dying of dehydration and exposure, they’re getting caught up in the concertina wire. They’re showing up at our hospitals with massive lacerations.”

Abbott’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The federal government has sued Texas, arguing that a state governor doesn’t have the authority to place barriers along the border or in a navigable waterway, and Abbott has contested that assertion. His stance is reminiscent of his tenure as state attorney general during the Obama administration. That’s when he famously said “I go to the office. I sue the federal government. Then I go home.”

Perhaps also supporting the notion that Abbott’s border moves are primarily dictated by politics is the fact that he’s packed thousands of migrants on buses and sent them off to Democratic-voting cities, including into the depth of a Chicago winter — without alerting authorities so they could prepare, and without providing migrants from the tropics with hats and gloves.

He has said Texas’ resources to deal with migrants have been overwhelmed.

Real problems

Meanwhile, Ardovino, whose restaurant/resort borders Texas and Mexico, is improvising as he deals with dozens of migrants being smuggled across that part of the border daily.

He described how earlier in March, he got a call from a manager saying that two suspected smugglers were at the bar, seemingly waiting. Ardovino called the Border Patrol and had to navigate an intramural dispute between field officers who wanted to respond and office personnel who didn’t.

For his part, Ardovino wanted officers to come, but he wanted them to stay out of his restaurant for fear of a confrontation inside.

Eight migrants approached the coyotes’ truck in the parking lot and a few jumped in. They scattered when Border Patrol officers came and towed the truck, while the suspected smugglers looked on, firmly planted on their barstools.

“I thought, ‘Now they’re never leaving,’” Ardovino said, describing the entire drama as “a strange little s— show.”

Eventually, the officers entered a tense bar and arrested the suspected smugglers.

“This is the third time this has happened in the last eight months,” Ardovino said, describing the increasingly threatening behavior of the smugglers. “They were kids at first. Then they were people with paper plates on their cars. Now they’re stolen cars. Now they’re getting a lot more aggressive.”

Instead of making life harder for migrants — as Texas authorities are — Ardovino said law enforcement should focus like a laser on their smugglers.

“The people who are preying on the migrants are the worst of the worst,” he said. “We should immediately arrest them and make their lives incredibly difficult.”

Working relationship

More than 400 miles away in another border town — Del Rio, Texas — another businessman has also been dealing with the surge in migrants since it started. Like Ardovino, Rakesh Kapur, owner of the Whispering Palms Inn, says claims that masses of migrants are coming to the states to commit crime and go on welfare are false.

Some migrants have committed horrific crimes. But research shows undocumented persons commit violent crime at substantially lower rates than those who are native born — and they’re prohibited by law from receiving most forms of federal assistance.

Kapur said claims that the migratory surge amounts to an “invasion” are bunk.

“It’s desperation,” he said. “They come here and ask, ‘Can we clean the pool?’ They want to work. They don’t want to live off the government. Back in California where I lived a long time people would get someone’s name and Social Security card so they could work. They were paying taxes, but they were not able to file tax returns.”

Migration is a topic Kapur knows intimately.

His family is originally from the part of India that is now Pakistan. His great-grandfather migrated to Kenya. Kapur was born there, educated in England, started a business, and then moved to the United States and at one point owned several hotels.

“My great-grandfather might have been a slave,” Kapur said. “But when we came to Africa, we got into business, were self-sufficient, we grew the economy there and our family was very well-off.”

Kapur and his family are not alone. In fact, immigrants are substantially overrepresented in the ranks of American entrepreneurs.

The Harvard Business Review in 2021 reported that while 13.7% of the workforce was foreign born, immigrants made up 20.2% of the self-employed workforce and were responsible for 25% of startups. Even more striking, immigrants to the United States founded or cofounded 55% of the nation’s billion-dollar companies.

Kapur scoffed at the idea that the vast majority of migrants who made their way through the terrors of the Darien Gap, and braved the gangs of the Northern Triangle and Mexico to come here for a life of crime.

“These guys are so terrified and so scared,” said. “After what they’ve experienced, do you think they’re going to come and rob the place?”

Instead, Kapur agreed with Ardovino that migrants are coming to fill some of the 8.5 million vacant jobs in the United States.

“The Republicans want fodder — ‘We’ll have to take care of them,’ they say,” Ardovino said. “Well, then, let them work. They came here for that.”

Realistic solutions

Cesar Blanco’s state Senate district extends down the Rio Grande from El Paso and into the Big Bend region. It also runs hundreds of miles due east into the mountainous ranch country of West Texas.

In an interview last month, he said ranchers in his district have been harmed in the migration surge primarily by smuggler “coyotes” driving onto their land, damaging crops, knocking down fences and letting cattle loose only to die on the roadside. Such damages might sound pedestrian, but Blanco said some suffered by constituents ran upward of $100,000 and big portions often weren’t covered by insurance.

Blanco said he co-sponsored a bill creating a fund to help ranchers with uninsured damages, but there’s only so much the state can do.

“The only entity that can fix the issue of immigration and border security is Congress,” he said. “They have refused to do it up to this point. They need to do comprehensive, humanitarian immigration reform so we can get people who are fleeing to a safe country and on a path to citizenship.”

A bipartisan compromise was reached early this year in the U.S. Senate that would have beefed up resources for immigration courts and asylum seekers, provided new equipment to detect drugs like fentanyl and added Border Patrol personnel. However, it died when Trump said he didn’t want to give the Democrats anything that could be seen as a political win for Biden.

As in 2013, bipartisan action on immigration was sacrificed to political considerations — and this time, Trump bluntly said so.

To offer a way forward, the National Immigration Forum last month unveiled its Border Security & Management Framework. Many of its elements were also part of the bipartisan bill that died at Trump’s behest, but its architects are pushing forward.

“As advocates, lots of us have done a really good job convincing Americans and lawmakers that the immigration system is broken,” said Kristie De Peña, of the Niskanen Center, a think tank that advocates against polarization. “This is an effort to convince them that it’s also fixable.”

One of the fixes proposed in the framework is updating the law and federal processes to deal with the human smuggling that Ardovino complained of so bitterly.

The framework also proposes augmenting resources, cutting wait times and being more precise about who is eligible for asylum in the United States. And, importantly, it calls for the creation of new pathways for immigrants to come here and work.

Ardovino evoked the Darien Gap, the lawless stretch of mountainous jungle between Colombia and Panama that undocumented migrants coming from South America must pass through. Survivors of the ordeal routinely report seeing corpses and rapes — and they often make the journey with their children in tow.

Ardovino called on the political class to drop the false, scary bombast and do something to help.

“I absolutely think the rhetoric is not helping at all,” he said. “This is a problem. We all know it’s a problem. Let’s get down to how we fix it. These people don’t want to make the journey through the Darien Gap. Who the f–k wants to go through the Darien Gap?”

This story was originally published in Ohio Capital Journal, which like Nevada Current is part of the States Newsroom nonprofit news network.

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Concern over illegal immigration and border security was Donald Trump’s central campaign issue when he won the presidency in 2016, and polls show it as the GOP’s most potent political weapon again in 2024. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

With polls showing unauthorized immigration as Republicans’ best issue for the fall, the GOP is looking to raise the alarm about voting by non-citizens and the undocumented.

The multi-pronged effort has been advanced in congressional legislation, public statements by top election officials and U.S. senators, plans produced by grassroots activists, and posts on X by former President Donald Trump and others.

Concern over illegal immigration and border security was Trump’s central campaign issue when he won the presidency in 2016, and polls show it as the GOP’s most potent political weapon again in 2024. A Feb. 27 Gallup poll found 28% of respondents saw it as the country’s most important issue, well ahead of any other topic.

At an April 2 rally in Michigan, Trump seized on the recent murder of a local woman, Ruby Garcia, who law enforcement has alleged was killed by her undocumented boyfriend.

“We threw him out of the country and crooked Joe Biden let him back in and let him stay and he viciously killed Ruby,” said Trump.

But the party is also using the issue to bolster its ongoing push to stoke fear about voter fraud and press for more restrictive voting rules. And it has often trafficked in false and misleading claims about voting by undocumented immigrants.

Voter fraud claims

Voting by non-citizens is extremely rare. That’s because, voting advocates say, non-citizens are especially careful not to do anything that might jeopardize their status in the country.

A voter fraud database run by the conservative Heritage Foundation, which covers several decades in which billions of votes have been cast across the country, contains 29 entries that mention non-citizens. In some of these, a non-citizen registered but did not vote.

Still, over the last few weeks, Republican secretaries of state from Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama, and at least two U.S. Senate Republicans, were the latest to tout the issue.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger wrote in a March 12 op-ed that “leftist-activist allies” of President Joe Biden “want to open the gate to non-citizen voting.”

At issue is a lawsuit challenging a Georgia measure requiring people registering to vote to show documentary proof of citizenship.

The voting-rights advocates behind the suit say the requirement isn’t needed, and can present a barrier to registration for some voters, especially naturalized citizens, who may not have easy access to citizenship documents.

In the op-ed, Raffensperger, who famously resisted Trump’s pressure to collude in subverting Georgia’s 2020 election results, sought to conflate the issue of illegal voting by the undocumented with burgeoning efforts by a few Democratic-led cities, including Washington, D.C., to allow legal non-citizens to vote in local elections.

He has pushed for a constitutional amendment in Georgia that would bar local governments in the state from enfranchising non-citizens.

“Leftist activists have already shown that they want to change the laws that require voters to be U.S. citizens,” Raffensperger wrote. “A constitutional amendment would eliminate any possibility for future efforts to change those laws.”

Warning on DOJ program

Days earlier, Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson sent a letter to the U.S. Justice Department, warning that a federal program aimed at making voter registration easier for people in the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service and the Bureau of Prison could lead to the registration not only of ineligible felons but also of the undocumented.

“Due to the Biden Administration’s border policies, millions of illegal aliens have not only been allowed into this country during the last three years, but they have also been allowed to stay. Many of these aliens have been in the custody of an agency of the Department of Justice including the Marshals,” Watson wrote in the letter, which his office provided to States Newsroom.

“Providing ineligible non-citizens with information on how to register to vote undoubtedly encourages them to illegally register to vote.”

The Justice Department program is part of the Biden administration’s response to the president’s sweeping 2021 executive order aimed at using federal government agencies to expand access to voter registration. Republicans have condemned the order as an improper attempt to use public resources to advance partisan political goals. There is no evidence the order has led to ineligible voters being added to the rolls.

Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen, as well as Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., also sought to raise concerns about non-citizen voting in an exchange at a March 12 hearing of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. The two Alabama Republicans charged that the federal government has denied election officials the tools they need to verify citizenship.

“I think (verifying citizenship) is important, now more than ever, especially given what’s happening at the southern border,” said Allen, who was testifying before the panel.

At the same hearing, Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, used his time to ask the witnesses if they agreed that only U.S. citizens should be able to vote in federal elections — something that’s already the law — and that people registering to vote should have to show proof of citizenship. Lee later sent out a clip of the exchange on X. 

Memo calls for proof of citizenship to register

Also last month, the conservative voting activist Cleta Mitchell, who played a key role in Trump’s bid to overturn the 2020 election, circulated a memo on “the threat of non-citizen voting in 2024.” The memo, posted online by a conservative advocacy group, called for a federal law requiring people to show proof of citizenship when registering, among other steps.

“There are myriad left-wing advocacy groups who register illegals to vote,” Mitchell wrote, a charge for which she did not provide evidence.

But the party’s efforts to tie together voting and immigration have been underway for longer in this election cycle. Last March, as States Newsroom reported, a group of prominent conservative election activists came together to promote what they called a national campaign to “protect voting at all levels of government as the exclusive right of citizens.”

Months later, congressional Republicans unveiled a sweeping elections bill, which aimed to capture the GOP’s top priorities in its push to tighten voting rules, and which contained a full section on stopping non-citizen voting.

Among other steps, the measure would give states more access to federal data on citizenship and make it easier for them to remove people flagged as non-citizens from the rolls. It also would penalize states where non-citizens can vote in local elections by cutting their share of federal election funding.

While Democrats control the Senate and White House, the bill has little chance of becoming law.

Legislation on non-citizen voting

Separately, in the current session of Congress alone, the House Administration Committee has passed seven different bills addressing non-citizen voting.

Last year, the House voted to use Congress’ authority over the District of Columbia to overturn D.C.’s law enfranchising non-citizens — the first time the House had voted to overturn a District bill since 2015. The Senate didn’t take up the bill.

One Republican lawmaker introduced a resolution calling for a constitutional amendment to ban non-citizen voting.

Legal non-citizen voting has a long history in the U.S. In the middle of the 19th century, at least 16 states passed measures enfranchising non-citizens, often to lure workers to underpopulated western states.

These laws were gradually repealed in the late 19th and early 20th century — a period when a more general anxiety about mass voting led to Jim Crow laws in the South and laws restricting voting by Catholic and Jewish immigrants in the north.

Some prominent figures have falsely suggested that Democrats are soft-pedaling border security so they can benefit from the votes of the undocumented.

“That’s why they are allowing these people to come in — people that don’t speak our language — they are signing them up to vote,” Trump said at a January rally in Iowa. “And I believe that’s why you are having millions of people pour into our country and it could very well affect the next election. That’s why they are doing it.”

Elon Musk, the billionaire tech entrepreneur, has taken a similar view.

“Dems won’t deport, because every illegal is a highly likely vote at some point,” Musk told his over 170 million followers in a Feb. 26 post on X, which he owns, commenting on news that an undocumented immigrant hadn’t been deported despite a string of arrests. “That simple incentive explains what seems to be insane behavior.”

U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, charged in a 2022 TV ad: “Joe Biden’s open border is killing Ohioans with more illegal drugs and more Democrat voters pouring into this country.”

Kansas law

One figure who may have done more than any to promote the threat of voting by non-citizens is Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach. As the state’s secretary of state, Kobach pushed for a law requiring voter registrants to provide proof of citizenship.

The law was ultimately struck down by a federal court, which found “no credible evidence” that a significant number of non-citizens had registered to vote before it was implemented. The law was responsible for keeping tens of thousands of voter registration applications in limbo during an election.

Kobach went on to chair a voter fraud commission created in 2017 by the Trump White House, which pushed for a federal law similar to the Kansas law. The panel disbanded the following year without providing evidence of widespread voter fraud.

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Newcomers and an El Paso police officer just outside the entrance to the Paso del Norte international bridge Tuesday. A law passed by Texas Republicans would require local police to involve themselves in immigration enforcement. Its constitutionality is being questioned in the courts. (Photo by Marty Schladen, Ohio Capital Journal.)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

El PASO, Texas — Texas’ GOP politicians have long used state law enforcement to act tough on immigration. But developments over the past few days seem to show how their latest maneuvering is inviting chaos — raising fundamental constitutional questions, outraging local officials, and worsening international relations.

For more than a decade, the state has spent billions trying to insert state and local law enforcement from Texas — and other states such as Ohio — into the immigration debate. The results have been dubious.

The latest uproar started last year when the legislature passed — and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed — Senate Bill 4 amid surges of migrants crossing the southern border seeking asylum. The law made it a misdemeanor on first offense to cross into the United States outside of a port of entry and empowered state and local police and courts to enforce the law.

It was predicated on the claim that the record surges in migration amounted to an “invasion,” a term with military implications that the facts on the ground don’t support. Such incendiary rhetoric helped motivate a racist massacre in El Paso in 2019 by a man who said he was trying to stop an “invasion” — and that helped motivate El Paso County and Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center to lead the lawsuit against S.B. 4.

The law’s constitutionality is highly questionable because the federal government reserves to itself the right to set migration policy. In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that principle by striking down parts of a 2010 Arizona law that would have given police in the state power to arrest people for being undocumented immigrants.

Under federal law, it’s legal to cross into the United States and seek asylum.

In response to that fact, the Texas Legislature passed S.B. 4 making undocumented immigrants criminals under state law. U.S. District Court Judge David Ezra last month blocked enforcement of the law weeks before it was expected to go into effect. But then on March 4, the hard-right 5th Circuit U.S. District Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled that the law could take effect while its constitutionality was being considered.

The 5th Circuit ruling gave El Paso County, the Biden administration, and other plaintiffs the chance to file an emergency appeal with the Supreme Court. They did, arguing that migrants would suffer irreparable harm if the law were allowed to take effect without a judgment on its constitutionality.

On Tuesday afternoon, the court issued an unsigned order punting the matter back to the 5th Circuit and allowing the law to take effect. However, in a concurrence, Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh urged the 5th Circuit to do its job and rule on the constitutional question quickly.

“If a decision does not issue soon the (El Paso County and other opponents) may return to this court,” Barrett wrote, according to the New York Times.

Taking the hint, the 5th Circuit temporarily blocked enforcement of S.B. 4 and scheduled an emergency hearing for Wednesday morning so the sides could consider the law’s constitutionality. It’s unclear when it will rule, but some experts said it’s unlikely the court will allow enforcement until its constitutionality is considered.

The ‘invasion’ chorus

On Tuesday, during the short time the law was in effect, the chaos it might create was foreshadowed.

Local governments and charities have long shouldered a disproportionate share of the burden created by spikes in migration and many are reluctant to pay for their law enforcement agencies to handle what has for more than a century been a federal job. In addition, officials along the border have long feared that delegating migration enforcement to local law officers will only push migrants further into the shadows by making them afraid to approach police.

“El Paso County has been very successful in mitigating and minimizing any immigration challenges,” County Judge Ricardo Samaniego said in a statement issued Tuesday while the law was in effect. “S.B. 4 is rudely disrupting the incredible collaboration between local law enforcement, (non-governmental organizations) and local government. We have been the safest community because of these collaborative efforts more so than any other factor.”

During the hours S.B. 4 was in effect, the Mexican government was left with the prospect of having to deal with 50 different state governments’ ideas about how undocumented migrants should be handled. It ended up saying it would only accept migrants from the federal government.

“Mexico recognizes the importance of a uniform migration policy and the bilateral efforts with the United States to ensure that migration is safe, orderly and respectful of human rights, and is not affected by state or local legislative decisions,” the Mexican government said in a statement. “In this regard, Mexico will not accept, under any circumstances, repatriations by the State of Texas.”

It also slammed the law broadly, saying it “seeks to stop the flow of migrants by criminalizing them, and encouraging the separation of families, discrimination and racial profiling that violate the human rights of the migrant community.”

El Paso and many other border cities are among the safest in Texas and the United States. And when it comes to federal immigration enforcement, green-striped Border Patrol vehicles were a near-constant presence this week on the long drive from Del Rio to El Paso.

Research has also shown that undocumented immigrants commit crime at substantially lower rates than the native-born.

In addition, migrants aren’t driving tanks, carrying bazookas or jumping off Higgins Boats as they cross the border. But Abbott, the Texas governor, is claiming the constitutional right to take migration enforcement into state hands by claiming that Texas is the victim of an “invasion.”

“I have already declared an invasion under Article I, § 10, Clause 3 to invoke Texas’s constitutional authority to defend and protect itself,” Abbott said in a Jan. 24 letter. “That authority is the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the contrary.”

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost on Wednesday joined the “invasion” chorus. He led 22 state attorneys general in filing a friend-of-the court brief supporting Texas’s claim that it could preempt federal law under Invasion Clause of the Constitution.

However, nowhere does the brief explain how the situation at the border meets the primary definition of “invasion” — that of a military force entering bent on taking over.

Rather than being an “invasion,” experts have said that many of the problems caused by recent surges in migrants showing up, turning themselves in and seeking asylum have to do with a lack of infrastructure — such as insufficient immigration judges and courts to process their claims quickly.

A bipartisan agreement was hashed out earlier this year that would ease those and other bottlenecks, but it appears dead after former President Donald Trump warned fellow Republicans not to allow President Joe Biden to sign anything that would ease the migration issue.

As a consequence, advanced scanners to detect fentanyl in vehicles at the ports of entry — where most illicit drugs are crossing into the country — are sitting unused in warehouses due to a lack of money to install and operate them, NBC reported earlier this month. While some politicians imply that asylum seekers are smuggling in such drugs, the vast majority are seized at ports of entry.

As Texas Republicans try to insert state and local police even further into the immigration debate, their earlier efforts have cost billions and yielded poor results.

Former Gov. Rick Perry used fuzzy crime statistics to justify a 2014 surge of state troopers to the border. The most tangible result was that traffic tickets went down and vehicle crashes went up in portions of the state that were left under-policed, according to a 2015 analysis by the El Paso Times.

More recently, Abbott’s rushed effort in 2022 to surge the National Guard to the border left the troops themselves calling the mission “a disaster,” an investigation by Military Times and the Texas Tribune found.

This story was originally published in the Ohio Capital Journal.

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Asylum seekers board a bus en route to a shelter at Port Authority Bus Terminal on May 18, 2023, in New York City. President Joe Biden said Monday cities need more federal support to deal with an influx of migrants. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Monday urged local officials to lobby their members of Congress to pass the bipartisan border security deal struck in the Senate that Republicans walked away from this year.

In a brief speech touting the administration’s accomplishments to more than 2,000 mayors, city officials and other advocates in Washington for the National League of Cities’ Congressional Cities Conference, Biden said cities needed more federal support to deal with a surge of newly arrived migrants.

“It has the funds that many of our cities badly need,” Biden said of the bipartisan border security bill. “Tell your members in Congress to show up, show a little spine, and pass the bipartisan border security bill.”

Cities such as New York, Chicago and Denver have had their resources stretched following bus arrivals of migrants sent from GOP Texas Gov. Greg Abbott without warning to Democrat-led cities. Many local officials have pressed the administration for aid and supported that bipartisan bill that would have overhauled immigration policy, especially at the southern border.

At the behest of GOP presidential front-runner Donald J. Trump, who has campaigned on fears of immigration at the southern border and was against the bill, congressional Republicans last month dropped their initial support.

Biden’s speech mainly focused on promoting the federal funding for state and local governments his administration championed in several major laws Congress passed since Biden took office. Those laws include the American Rescue Plan that provided pandemic-related economic assistance, the bipartisan infrastructure law and a law to spur investment in semiconductor manufacturing.

He rattled off a list of bridges that are being updated and repaired with funding from the infrastructure law, such as the Brent Spence Bridge that connects Kentucky and Ohio.

As the president gears up for the November election, he laid out to conference attendees how he wants to continue working in a bipartisan manner and strengthen the economy, including by building more housing.

“Every family deserves a place to call home, a place to have your American dreams come true,” Biden said.

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An immigration activist participates in a rally to highlight immigrant essential worker rights near the U.S. Supreme Court on May 12, 2021, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

WASHINGTON — Immigration advocates and business leaders on Friday urged President Joe Biden to use his executive authority to extend work visas to long-term undocumented people and immigrant spouses of U.S. citizens, following his State of the Union address Thursday night that centered on the economy and immigration reform.

In a Friday press call organized by the American Business Immigration Coalition, a group that advocates for immigration reform as an economic benefit, they expressed frustration that the Biden administration has granted new migrants humanitarian parole in order to quickly give them protections and the ability to work in the United States — but had not extended the same privileges to people who are undocumented who have been in the country for longer.

And noting that Congress has failed to act on immigration reform in nearly 40 years, and that a bipartisan deal on border security quickly fell apart last month, those advocates and business leaders see an executive order as the only path forward.

“We have no (other) choice than to knock on the door of the White House,” Al Cardenas, a business leader and co-chairman of the American Business Immigration Coalition, said Friday. “Everyone’s frustrated.”

Americans with undocumented spouses also expressed their frustration and pushed for executive action to grant relief for the more than 1.1 million Americans who fear their undocumented spouses could face deportation.

“‘I will not separate families.’ That’s what President Biden said last night,” Ashley DeAzevedo, the president of American Families United, said of Biden’s State of the Union speech. “Those may be just five words to some people, but to me … they are a promise, a commitment to our families and our futures.”

Immigration in spotlight

The immigration section of Biden’s State of the Union speech to Congress focused on how Republicans walked away from a bipartisan border deal and how Biden wants to work with Congress to overhaul U.S. immigration law.

As Biden spoke about immigration, he was often interrupted by Republicans, who that day had passed a House bill named for a murdered college student from Georgia, Laken Riley, whose death conservatives have tied to White House immigration policies.

Immigration, specifically the issue of how to stem the flow of migration at the southern border, has become a central campaign topic in the presidential rematch between Biden and GOP front-runner Donald J. Trump.

U.S. Democratic Rep. Delia Ramirez of Illinois said she was disappointed that Biden did not support expanding work visas for immigrants, noting that there are nearly 9 million job openings nationwide. 

While Biden said that some of his legislative accomplishments will create millions of new jobs, Ramirez argued that “we need workers for those jobs.”

“Immigrants help strengthen our economy,” she said. “Immigrants fill those jobs that we desperately need to fill. Immigrants are anxious to continue to contribute more revenue into our tax rolls.”

‘Leapfrogged’

The frustration over work permits comes as the Biden administration deals with the largest number of migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border in 20 years and has used broad authority to grant those migrants work visas under humanitarian parole.

Sam Sanchez, a board member of the National Restaurant Association, said undocumented workers who have waited on their visas for decades feel like they are “being leapfrogged with new (migrant) arrivals.”

“We’re here to help everybody out,” Sanchez said. “But we cannot forget the long-term migrants that (have) been contributing to our economy.”

There are more than 10 million undocumented people in the U.S., many who have lived in the country for decades.

Rebecca Shi, the executive director of the American Business Immigration Coalition, said that the Biden administration’s frequent use of humanitarian parole is what inspired their push for the president to grant work visas for long-term undocumented people.

“We didn’t think (this) was possible, but you know, he’s granted 1.4 million work permits to the new migrants,” she said. “So, at least extend the same benefits for those who’ve been working and sweating and paying taxes here for decades.”

Undocumented spouses

Shi added that many of those undocumented workers who live in mixed-status families, meaning that some are U.S. citizens and some undocumented, also live in presidential battleground states –  Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

U.S. citizens urge Biden to expand work permits to undocumented spouses

“That’s a political reality,” she said.

DeAzevedo said that American Families United, which represents U.S. citizens and their undocumented spouses, is launching campaigns in California, Colorado, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to demand the “simple right for our spouses to work legally in this country that is their home.”

“The state of our unions is tired, frustrated and left out,” DeAzevedo said.

One person who feels that way was introduced only as Allyson, a U.S. citizen who has been married to an undocumented immigrant, with whom she has three children, for more than 20 years. She did not disclose her full name.

“We are tired and, frankly, so angry at this administration,” Allyson said. “Year after year we continue to live in trauma and fear of separation, especially if an unfriendly administration takes over again.”

She said that she and her family feel disrespected.

“We see over 1 million recently arrived new migrants gain work permits and family reunification through parole, while we… waited 20 years, working, paying taxes,” she said.

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An estimated 1.1 million U.S. citizens are in a mixed-status marriage, according to the advocacy group American Families United. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

Immigration advocates are calling on President Joe Biden to use his executive authority to expand work permits and deportation protections to undocumented immigrant spouses of U.S. citizens.

Existing immigration policy, they argue, is tearing apart loving families and forcing American citizens to make impossible decisions, like divorcing a person they love or leaving the country to live in exile with them. It also has a negative economic impact, keeping potential workers out of the job market during a time of labor shortages.

An estimated 1.1 million U.S. citizens are in a mixed-status marriage, according to the advocacy group American Families United. An estimated 4.9 million U.S. citizen children have at least one parent who is undocumented, according to the advocacy group FWD.us.

On Valentines Day, American Families United and American Business Immigration Coalition Action launched a campaign urging Biden to take executive action and parole the non-citizen spouses of U.S. citizens. Parole allows non-citizen immigrants to temporarily reside and work in the United States.

“The president has that authority,” said Ashley DeAzevedo, president of American Families United. “He’s demonstrated he isn’t afraid to use it to expand work permits for new arrivals, including over a million new immigrants from Ukraine, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and Haiti.”

The husbands and wives of U.S. citizens deserve similar respect and opportunities, she argued.

“If (Biden) only showed a fraction of that effort to support our families, our lives could be so different,” added DeAzevedo, who is a U.S. citizen in a mixed-status marriage.

Joining the immigration groups in their call for executive action is U.S. Rep. Delia C. Ramirez, a Democrat from Illinois and the only member of Congress in a mixed-status family.

The 40-year-old, who is married to a DACA recipient, said she was 3 years old the last time Congress enacted “any real immigration reforms.”

“The reality is nobody in leadership in the last 30 years has done anything to really move comprehensive immigration reform,” she said.

Recent efforts to overhaul the county’s immigration system have stalled in Congress. The Senate walked away from a major bipartisan package earlier this month when it became clear House Republicans wouldn’t pass it.

That legislation did not address the issue of assistance for non-citizen spouses of citizens, said DeAzevedo.

“American voters can tell the difference between border policy and immigration policy,” said James O’Neill, director of legislative affairs for ABIC Action. “They understand the labor shortage and they want solutions to that labor shortage.”

O’Neill said ABIC polled voters in seven swing states — Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia — and asked whether they would support a policy change to give work permits to “long-term immigrant contributors, farm workers, dreamers and spouses of U.S. citizens.” A majority, 66% were in favor; only 25% opposed.

Ramirez called the expansion of work permits for non-citizen spouses a “win-win” for the economy and mixed-status families. She added that the Valentine’s Day launch of a campaign to push for executive action was fitting.

“As we’re celebrating love, celebrating community, celebrating our spouses, the fact that so many people in this moment are worried that they may be separated from their loved ones because of this broken immigration system is despicable and unacceptable.”

Love stories

Elena, a Nevadan who is using a pseudonym to protect against possible repercussions affecting her federal employment, said she was sharing her story despite the risk because she wants to be a voice for the millions of people whose families have been “shattered by our nation’s broken immigration system.”

“I was married to the love of my life, who was an undocumented immigrant,” she said, her voice shaking with emotion. “Together, we worked hard to achieve the American Dream, raising two beautiful children, and purchasing our own home.”

But there hasn’t been a happy ending.

Elena, a U.S. citizen, has worked for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for more than two decades. She says she was required to submit to a background check and needed to provide her husband’s social security number, which he did not have.

Fearing his immigration status would cost her family their source of income, Elena says, she made the “agonizing” decision to divorce him.

“The repercussions of this decision have inflicted immense pain and suffering upon me and my children,” she said.

Elena said she was plunged into battles with depression and anxiety, the latter of which is particularly high during election years like this one.

“I look to see where the candidates stand,” she added. “What will happen? How could a different administration destroy my life?”

Elena and her then-husband had tried to correct his legal status only to be met with him being issued a 10-year bar from the United States for unlawful presence. It was a common theme among the more than half dozen American citizens who shared their stories Wednesday.

Liza, a flight attendant from Atlanta who chose not to use her whole name, said she and her husband of 12 years began the legal immigration process the week they were married.

“Three years later, we hit the ultimate roadblock,” she said. “We were advised my husband could be subject to a lifetime bar from the U.S. should he leave to attend his visa interview in Mexico. Imagine our devastation that day when instead of finally reaching the end of the arduous immigration process we discovered there was no end in sight.”

Liza, her husband, and their two children are now “stuck living in the shadows” — in constant fear of him being deported and having their family separated.

What Liza and her husband were warned about is exactly what Dr. Gina Cano says happened to her and her husband a decade ago. He returned to Mexico for a visa appointment and wound up permanently barred from the United States.

Cano recalled receiving the phone call where her husband told her he wasn’t going to be able to come back home to her.

“There was nothing I could do as a U.S. citizen to change it or to even appeal,” she added.

Cano, who at the time was finishing a family medicine residency in Cincinnati, Ohio, made the decision to live apart from her husband while finishing her medical training.

“The difficult decisions have continued,” she said. “Turning down dream job offers, leaving my country to keep our family together, giving birth to our children in a foreign country, and missing countless holidays and family events…”

Cano has now lived in Mexico for nine years, though she has traveled back to the United States periodically to work, including during the height of the covid pandemic when health care professionals were in dire need.

“I’m facing living apart from my aging parents and never being able to pursue our dreams together as a family because of these outdated and ineffective immigration bars,” she said. “My husband is a kind, hardworking man who received a permanent bar for just having helped his family. We should not be punished for the rest of our lives for that.”

Ed Markowitz, an American citizen with Colorado roots, experienced something similar. Like others who shared their stories, the Navy veteran said he knew his wife Rocio was undocumented when they married, but he expected his citizenship to be able to provide a path toward legalization.

It did not.

Instead, in 2011, Rocio was permanently barred from reentering the United States after she left in search of medical care for their son. The couple and their son now live in Canada.

“This dysfunctional system has forced my son, my wife, and me to live in exile, away from our families and away from everything I’ve ever known as home,” he said.

It is “an injustice being served to innocent and beautiful American families,” added Markowitz. “And it hurt. It still hurts.”

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(Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

WASHINGTON — In their second attempt in as many weeks, U.S. House Republicans impeached Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday, marking an inflection point in the growing rift between the GOP and the White House over immigration policy decisions at the southern border.

In a 214-213 vote, the House approved two articles of impeachment that charged Mayorkas with willfully ignoring immigration law and lying to Congress about the status of border security. It is only the second time in history that a Cabinet member has been impeached; William Belknap, the secretary of war and a former Iowa state legislator, was impeached in 1876.

A vote on the same resolution failed spectacularly last week, 214-216, while House GOP Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana was absent due to ongoing cancer treatments. Republican Blake Moore of Utah switched his vote from “yes” to “no” as a procedural move to allow the resolution to be reconsidered.

“House Republicans are far from done,” House Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green of Tennessee wrote on X before the Tuesday vote. “Secretary Mayorkas has sparked the worst border crisis in American history, and it’s long past time for him to be impeached.”

Green held several hearings on impeachment proceedings against Mayorkas.

All House Democrats present and three Republicans voted against the two articles of impeachment. Critics of the process have said a Cabinet official should not be impeached over what they say are policy disputes.

The Republicans who voted against impeachment were Reps. Ken Buck of Colorado, Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin and Tom McClintock of California.

President Joe Biden slammed House Republicans, calling the impeachment vote “petty political games.”

“Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas, a Cuban immigrant who came to the United States with his family as political refugees, has spent more than two decades serving America with integrity in a decorated career in law enforcement and public service,” Biden said.  “Instead of staging political stunts like this, Republicans with genuine concerns about the border should want Congress to deliver more border resources and stronger border security.”

Following the vote, Mia Ehrenberg, a spokesperson for DHS, said in a statement that “House Republicans will be remembered by history for trampling on the Constitution for political gain rather than working to solve the serious challenges at our border.”

The Senate will be required under the Constitution to hold an impeachment trial. Conviction would require a vote by two-thirds of that chamber.

The impeachment effort, initiated by Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene, is perhaps the most high-profile example of the growing clash between Democrats and Republicans on how to handle an unprecedented number of migrants at the southern border.

Tensions have only increased after Senate Republicans tanked a bipartisan border security deal last week. The agreement would have significantly overhauled U.S. immigration law by creating a temporary procedure to shut down the border during active times and raising the bar for asylum claims.

The border security deal, which was tied to a $95 billion security package, died in the Senate after Republicans fell in line with GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump, who has centered his campaign on stoking fears about immigration at the southern border.

The global security package passed early Tuesday without the immigration deal. 

House Democrats have decried the efforts to impeach Mayorkas as political, while Republicans have argued that Mayorkas should be held accountable for what they have deemed a “crisis” at the southern border.

The first article of impeachment accuses Mayorkas of a “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law,” and the second accuses him of a breach of public trust by making false statements during congressional testimony, particularly citing statements by Mayorkas telling lawmakers the border is “secure.”

Due to House Republicans’ razor-thin majority and absences last week, House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana could only afford to lose two votes during the first impeachment vote, on Feb. 6. Scalise was back in Washington on Tuesday, giving Republicans the margin they needed to overcome three members voting with Democrats.

The same GOP lawmakers who voted against the second impeachment also voted against the first — Buck, McClintock and Gallagher.

Gallagher, who was a key holdout in the effort to impeach Mayorkas, announced shortly after that he would not seek reelection.

In an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, Gallagher explained his vote against impeachment, expressing concern about the precedent it would set.

“Creating a new, lower standard for impeachment, one without any clear limiting principle, wouldn’t secure the border or hold President Biden accountable,” he wrote. “It would only further pry open the Pandora’s box of perpetual impeachment.”

The White House said in a statement last week that impeaching Mayorkas “would be an unprecedented and unconstitutional act of political retribution that would do nothing to solve the challenges our Nation faces in securing the border.”

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Republican U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson. (Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

If you want to see what happens when a dog catches a car, look at Republicans in Congress.

For decades, the GOP has increasingly been focused on immigration, spurred by a xenophobia intent on stemming the flow of immigrants from Latin America that was, 20 or so years ago, confined to a small but vocal wing of the party but now makes up the bulk of Republicans.

Strict enforcement, overhauling the asylum system and rapid deportations have topped the wish list for Republicans for years. So has a zeal to ensure no reform measures offer any new protections for undocumented immigrants already in the U.S., a hardline stance that has scuttled all attempts at comprehensive immigration reform this century.

So committed are they to border security and tightening immigration laws that they said for months the GOP wouldn’t support foreign aid for Ukraine and Israel unless these unrelated immigration measures were addressed.

Amazingly, that’s exactly what happened: A bipartisan team of senators spent weeks hashing out a deal for the foreign aid that includes pretty much everything GOP lawmakers have been asking for.

Democrats conceded on virtually every issue:

• an asylum-processing system that is faster and tougher that would prevent those who don’t meet asylum criteria from staying and working for years until backlogged courts hear their cases;
• bolstering border security, including a mechanism to shut down the border during surges of migrants;
• a ton more Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents;
• spending large sums on technology to detect fentanyl and other systems to stop trafficking;
• no protections for existing undocumented immigrants or ways for them to attain legal status, much less citizenship.

So, the Republican reaction was to take a victory lap and race to approve it, right?

Right?

…

Of course it wasn’t, because the purpose of Republicans winning a majority has nothing to do with actually achieving policy victories or even governing.

The dog caught the car and found itself paralyzed at its incredible luck in doing so, and thus declared the car wasn’t really a car at all. The proposal to dramatically reform asylum, increase border enforcement and shut down the border entirely was really just an amnesty program!

So say the luminaries of today’s Republican Party, none of whom can take “yes” for an answer. Everyone from rapist and accused criminal Donald Trump to Christian-dominionist-inspired House Speaker Mike Johnson to QAnon fan Marjorie Taylor Greene has declared that the Democratic kowtowing the GOP demands is really just throwing open the borders and granting amnesty to drug smugglers, human traffickers and terrorists.

It’s all nonsense. And it demonstrates that Republicans have buyer’s remorse for demanding that aid for Ukraine and Israel be tied to border security — an ultimatum they clearly didn’t think Democrats would ever engage with.

The reality is that their opposition is a craven political move driven solely by a naked pursuit of power for power’s sake.

That’s why Trump, knowing that his base is fueled by xenophobia and animated by their furor about GOP fear-mongering about the border, denounced the deal even before it was finalized. He and his congressional enablers fear that taking any action now will mean they can’t effectively attack Joe Biden over the border during this year’s election.

The hypocrisy is stunning, even if it’s not surprising. And it was predicted in full by U.S. Sen. James Lankford, the Oklahoma Republican who brokered the deal (along with Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy and Arizona Independent Kyrsten Sinema) and finds himself both exasperated at his fellow Republicans and now in their crosshairs.

As he said Monday, the whole thing only highlights just how uninterested in governing many of his colleagues actually are: “The key aspect of this, again, is: Are we as Republicans going to have press conferences and complain the border is bad and then intentionally leave it open?”

If it helps Donald Trump win in November, you bet your ass they will.

This column was originally published in the Arizona Mirror.

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