Rep. María Elvira Salazar wants to make peace with her Republican colleagues over her more moderate approach to immigration policy. But MAGA-aligned lawmakers are dismissing her efforts.

Salazar has been promoting her Dignity Act, a bill she introduced with Democratic Rep. Veronica Escobar, which would give some immigrants with no criminal background a path to obtain legal status, not citizenship. It would apply to about 10 to 12 million immigrants living in the U.S.

Over Congress’ two-week spring recess, Rep. Brandon Gill criticized the bill on X, calling it “mass amnesty” and claiming that it fails to put American citizens first. Other Republicans, including Rep. Andy Ogles and Sen. Mike Lee, immediately echoed Gill’s arguments. Following days of online criticism, Salazar said she had been receiving death threats.

When lawmakers returned to Washington last week, Salazar decided to take matters into her own hands. NOTUS witnessed Salazar and Rep. Mike Lawler, a co-sponsor of the measure, approach Gill on the House floor last Tuesday. Recounting the conversation later that day, Salazar told NOTUS, “It was time for us to talk to him and say, ‘Hey, in which way can we reach an agreement? You may have your position, I may have mine, but we are part of the same political party.’”

Lawler said that he and Salazar wanted to “provide clarity on what the bill actually does, and certainly what our purpose in advocating for it is, but also to make clear who qualifies, who doesn’t: Nobody that came under the Biden administration would qualify.”

“There’s going to be differences of opinion, and that’s the whole point of legislating,” Lawler continued. “From my vantage point, as I said to [Gill] yesterday, there’s a lot of things that can and should be included in the bill, including banning sanctuary cities, requiring proof of citizenship to vote. I think there’s a way to address concerns that some of my colleagues may have and advocate for conservative policies, but you have to be willing to actually have that discussion.”

However, Gill remained opposed to the idea of finding a middle ground.

Texas Rep. Brandon Gill opposes targeted changes proposed to immigration system backed by some House Republican moderates. Tom Williams/AP

“We’re so wildly divergent on this issue, it’s hard to imagine how we reach some form of consensus,” Gill said. “We should be consistent with the central thesis of the last election cycle, which is that the American people want their country back. They voted for mass deportations, and we should do everything we can to fulfill the promises that we made on the campaign trail to deport illegal aliens.”

“The bill needs to be scrapped entirely,” Gill continued.

The tension over and opposition to the bill have been building for months. Salazar has been bringing up the bill in closed-door House GOP conference meetings and in private conversations with her colleagues. But that persistent lobbying campaign has resulted in growing concerns among House Republicans over the legislation, NOTUS has learned.

“She has been putting it up frequently and shopping it around, trying to gather support from members,” one House Republican, who was granted anonymity to discuss private conversations and who opposes the bill, told NOTUS. “She has brought it up a lot.”

The internal feud also spilled out into a meeting at the White House complex, when Salazar pitched the bill to officials in a February meeting, according to three House Republicans familiar with the discussion. One of the lawmakers said the session was focused on former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s handling of immigration policy, including on concerns around how Hispanic voters were responding to it.

Another of the lawmakers said Salazar attempted to talk about the Dignity Act, which she has argued could help turn Hispanic voters to the GOP, but was immediately met with opposition.

This House Republican recounted her recapping the conversation and admitting, “‘Yes, I’m so upset,’” and added, “She goes, ‘I really thought they wanted to talk to me and I was going to be able to explain [the Dignity Act].’”

This House Republican said Salazar repeatedly stated that other Republicans in that meeting called her proposal “amnesty.” Rep. Jim Jordan, the lawmaker said, was among those who shared concerns about the bill.

When asked about this interaction, Jordan confirmed the meeting and told NOTUS that “what I’ve said in all meetings is I think we should pass H.R. 2,” referring to the Secure the Border Act, which passed in the House in 2023 but stalled in the Senate. This immigration enforcement bill would have resumed the border wall construction, limited asylum eligibility and established criminal penalties for overstaying visas.

“I’ve not endorsed the Dignity Act at all, but the approach I believe should happen is what I’ve said: Pass H.R. 2, then you have a vehicle in the Senate, and you can have discussions,” Jordan added. “I have members talk to me about different [agriculture] visas, the golden ticket that the president’s talked about, the high-skilled visas, the other worker visas. They talk about making reforms and changes to those. I’ve always said like, ‘OK, first let’s pass the enforcement bill, then you can have the full debate with the Senate and the White House can weigh in.’”

Salazar, who said she did not remember expressing concern after that meeting at the White House, told NOTUS, “The Republican Party needs to evolve this position and start the national conversation as to what are we going to do with those people who are needed in the economy and who do not have a criminal record.”

In a statement to NOTUS, a White House official said “the Administration is always happy to review proposals presented by members of Congress. The administration is focused on enforcing the current immigration laws and deporting the millions and millions of criminal illegal aliens that Joe Biden let in our country.” The official did not comment specifically on Salazar’s bill.

Ahead of this year’s midterm elections, Salazar argues the Dignity Act could potentially help Republicans regain Latino support.

“This is what the Republican Party needs,” Salazar told NOTUS. Her bill, she added, “will bring them back because we’re going to be sending a very clear message that we do want the Hispanics back in the Republican Party, that they belong to the Republican Party, that they have the same values that are entrenched in the Republican Party.”

A report released this year by Comité de 100 and the American Business Immigration Coalition Action, two bipartisan organizations, found that “the key to winning the Latino swing vote” is “common-sense immigration reform such as work permits and legal status for long term law abiding workers.” The report mentioned the Dignity Act as one example of “a balanced approach” to immigration.

Salazar, whose competitive Florida district is majority-Hispanic, stands to benefit politically from her immigration message. The Cook Political Report currently has Florida’s 27th district as likely Republican, but the report from the immigration groups found that if just 10% of Hispanics vote against Salazar, her seat could become a likely Democratic seat.

“The recent Miami mayor’s race shattered the assumption that South Florida’s Latino communities are a reliable Republican stronghold,” the report reads, referring to Eileen Higgins’ victory in December, when she became the first Democrat elected as Miami’s mayor in nearly three decades. The city is in Salazar’s district.

Salazar and Escobar first introduced the Dignity Act in 2023. When it was reintroduced in 2025, the lawmakers made changes to make it more palatable for Republicans because they had won a GOP trifecta in Washington in the 2024 election. They eliminated the “Redemption Program,” which would have created a pathway to citizenship. Instead, the current legislation looks to create the “Dignity Status,” which would grant legal protections from deportation without a way to become a U.S. citizen.

But even with these changes, the tension over the legislation has been months in the making.

Two other House Republicans told NOTUS that prior to the bill’s reintroduction in July, Salazar and some of the Dignity Act co-sponsors briefed their colleagues about her plan to reintroduce the legislation.

“People were foreshadowing the bill that was about to drop, then the bill dropped, and that’s when people said, ‘Wow, time out, what’s this?’” said one of the House Republicans who opposes the bill.

The other House Republican said there’s concern in the GOP conference that Salazar could file a discharge petition and collect signatures with Democrats to force a vote on the floor. The Dignity Act currently has 39 co-sponsors, 19 of whom are Republican.

“They’ve just certainly demonstrated they have the ability to do some of that in these matters related to immigration,” the House Republican told NOTUS about the group backing the bill. Just this week, the House passed a bill to reinstate Temporary Protected Status to thousands of Haitians living in the U.S., which was brought to the floor after a discharge petition by Rep. Ayanna Pressley reached the necessary amount of signatures. Four House Republicans signed on to the petition.

Lawmakers from both parties have called for an overhaul of the U.S. immigration system for decades. For supporters of the Dignity Act, the bill represents the first step toward reform.

“We have to find some comprehensive solution and I think the ‘Dignity Act’ does that pretty well,” Rep. Lloyd Smucker, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, told NOTUS. “We’re not rewarding additional people coming in. … People that are here most recently would still potentially be deported, but those who have been here a long time, who are working or served in the military or paying their dues, essentially, being productive members of society, it just doesn’t make sense to me that you would go to deporting everyone.”

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, another co-sponsor, suspected that the backlash against the bill comes from lawmakers not reading the bill text: “We deal with that all the time,” he told NOTUS.

“Any time you try to tackle a tough problem, it’s going to upset some people. [Salazar’s] been amazingly courageous, she cares deeply about the issue, she understands it better than anybody,” Fitzpatrick added. “We’re lucky to have her working on it. She stepped up when very few others have.”