Once upon a time, there were Republican leaders who advocated for comprehensive immigration reform. Democrats aren’t sure they still exist.
“Weren’t we all here? We just saw what happened,” Sen. Chris Murphy said of the existence of any Republicans willing to negotiate on immigration. “We had a bill that had 20-plus Republican votes, and the minute Trump came out against it, it had four. So, like, no. Trump runs the party on the issue of immigration.”
Donald Trump has said the border was the issue that helped win him the election, even more than the economy. He’s called for mass deportations, the end to birthright citizenship, to increase legal immigration and also to help “Dreamers.” He also quashed the most conservative, bipartisan piece of border legislation negotiated in Congress in recent memory — in part because he didn’t want to give President Joe Biden a political win.
Where does that leave the future of immigration negotiations on the Hill?
“I don’t know how many of those kind of Republicans exist in Congress,” Rep. Delia Ramirez said. “But I certainly know that there’s enough Republicans right now, many of them who are part of ABIC, which is the American Business Immigration Council, who are saying, ‘Yes, we’re Republicans, and yes, we want nothing more than legal migration and work permits.’ That is their workforce.”
Privately, Democrats say their Republican colleagues have questioned the feasibility of Trump’s immigration agenda.
“They know that we need to rejuvenate our labor force, and I’ve had conversations with some of our more conservative Republicans who realize it is not a doable, practical, smart thing to even attempt to deport millions of individuals,” one Democratic senator told NOTUS. “You’d have to basically use every airline seat for years. Nobody gets to go on vacation.”
But Democrats are aware that Republicans are increasingly beholden to Trump’s whims on the issue.
Trump’s hold on the party is stronger than ever, accompanied by the rise of the New Right, with lawmakers like Sen. Josh Hawley arguing that immigration depresses wages for working-class Americans. (Though new research suggests that isn’t true, the data is complicated.) Republican lawmakers who used to want to find common ground on the issue, like Sens. Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham, who were both part of the infamous Gang of Eight, have changed their tunes.
Even when there seemed to be broader Republican openness to certain immigrant-friendly reforms like DACA, comprehensive legislation hasn’t gotten over the finish line. Every attempt at reform over the last two decades has faltered at least partly because of the right wing of the Republican Party.
Rep. Joaquin Castro acknowledged that yes, some of his GOP colleagues speak differently behind closed doors, but it doesn’t really matter, he said: “The result is the same.”
“Whatever the private conversations are, at the end of the day, it matters how you vote in the legislative chamber,” Castro said.
“I don’t know,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said of the existence of Republicans willing to work with Democrats. “If they do, I haven’t heard of them, and I haven’t heard from them in a long time.”
Still, in a more hostile environment, not all Democrats have lost faith.
“I’m hopeful that there’s still a group of people that are willing to work together and govern and move forward practical solutions,” said Rep. Salud Carbajal, a member of the bipartisan problem solvers caucus. “To be in Congress, you got to be an optimist.”
Rep. Veronica Escobar pointed out that she co-sponsored a bill alongside Republican Rep. María Elvira Salazar to increase border security and expand legal pathways to citizenship.
“I will probably look to María and those folks to think through who else on their side, especially any incoming freshmen, who might be interested in addressing this once and for all,” Escobar said.
Moderate lawmakers attending the No Labels conference in Washington this week expressed optimism that business interests would drive Republicans back to the negotiating table around immigration.
“My hope is the low unemployment rate and the demand of all of our businesses, small, medium and large, like, ‘Man, we just need to hire more people,’ It’s going to open the door,” Sen. Tim Kaine said. “It’s going to open the door for an immigration reform bill that will be very workforce focused.”
Ultimately Democrats are waiting to see what happens. Will there be a blowback to mass deportations in Republican-controlled districts? Will it create the urgency necessary to expand legal pathways to citizenship and meaningfully reform the work visa system? Does Trump even mean it when he calls for mass deportation?
“We’re assuming that he wants to carry through on at least some of the bravado around immigration and many of the distortions that he campaigned on,” Rep. Chuy García said. “Maybe he just wants to put on a show and check it off, or maybe he wants to, in fact, engage in the biggest mass deportations ever.”
As it stands now, various factions of the Republican Party are interpreting Trump’s promises around mass deportation very differently. Republicans like Salazar and Rep. Tony Gonzales have called for a more limited approach, with deportations targeting violent criminals. They’re among the Republicans who have remained open to immigration reform outside of border enforcement, though, as Salazar told NOTUS, “after sealing the border.”
But there’s a reason so many attempts to change legislation on immigration have repeatedly failed. It’s a complicated system with many competing interests and a huge political lift. Neither party presents a united front of lawmakers who can agree on everything from asylum requirements to visa thresholds.
So complicated, in fact, that even those who have been burned before think bipartisanship isn’t over.
“Bipartisanship has to be a part of any negotiation on really changing immigration law. It just has to be a part of it,” said Sen. James Lankford, who worked with Murphy on the failed border compromise bill.
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Casey Murray is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.