Democrats tw and turn on immigration as Republicans attack in waves

The language from Republican candidates in ads and speeches is clear and negative, using the 2,000-mile border between the United States and Mexico as a stark partisan dividing line.
President Joe Biden’s policies, they argue, have led to unchecked borders and allowed immigrants, crime and fentanyl to pour into cities, turning every state into a border state.

Democratic candidates have a far murkier message, either avoiding the issue or leaning into tough talk that often addresses immigration on Republican terms. In Ohio, Rep. Tim Ryan, the party’s nominee for Senate, said a border wall could be “a piece” of the solution. In Arizona, Sen. Mark Kelly has called for more border enforcement officers and “physical barriers where they make sense.”
In the final stretch of this year’s midterm elections, the longtime struggle Democrats to build a cohesive approach to immigration has become newly urgent for the party as it confronts a wave of attacks in Republicans’ closing pitch to the country.
The emotional stakes of the issue are higher, too. Democrats were enraged, and Republicans thrilled, when two conservative governors seeking reelection — Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida — paid for efforts to bus and fly migrants to New York, Massachusetts and other Democratic-leaning areas. While the deliberately provocative moves came with risks, including that moderate voters would reject the use of migrants to score political points, they called attention to Democrats’ enduring defensive stance on the border.
U.S. Border Patrol agents round up migrants in Yuma, Ariz., May 4, 2021. (The New York Times)
“There is no topic more frustrating for me than immigration, because it cannot be dilled into 30 seconds,” said Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, who added that Republicans were “very good” at “making it sound like one quick and easy action will change everything.”
Adding to the challenge for Democrats, many of the immigrants rights’ groups and progressive organizations that have often done front-line work for the party are under financial strain and battling burnout.
Top donors to these groups have sat on the sidelines or turned their attention to other efforts focused on threats to democracy. And the groups say many of their organizers and volunteers are fatigued, after firing on all cylinders through the Trump years and weathering a pandemic that grounded their operations and took a toll on their communities.
“It’s like turning your car back on after not running it for a while,” said Montserrat Arredondo, the interim executive director of Arizona Wins, a coalition of progressive groups and labor unions. “The need is huge now,” she added, “but the resources haven’t necessarily caught up.”
Leaders of several groups with operations in Arizona, Nevada, Texas, Georgia and North Carolina say their dwindling money has forced them to make tough choices on advertising and delayed efforts to hire people to knock on doors, engage voters and combat misinformation.
“These are the people who are in the community, who are a part of the community and who can talk about how immigration is a good thing,” said Krian Ramos, an adviser to Way to Win, a national progressive network that has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in key congressional races.
For years, immigration has been a thorny issue for Democrats, who have highlighted its benefits for trade and the economy even as they call for tough border security. But in this year’s tough midterm environment, they have often joined Republicans in calling for aggressive measures and putting more boots on the ground.
In Texas, Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez, Democrats in hotly contested border dricts, have often sounded more like Republicans on the issue, drawing criticism from progressives and immigrant rights groups. Cuellar has said migrants are pouring into the country because they believe “the border is open.” Gonzalez has promoted a proposal to process asylum-seekers in Guatemala. “This is an idea that I pitched to President Trump, when he was in office, and he liked it,” he told Fox News in September.
Cuellar and Gonzalez have defended an approach that they see as governing from the middle. Gonzalez said in a statement that “solutions to our broken immigration system require a common-sense approach.”
But progressive Democrats like Michelle Vallejo, who is running in another competitive House race in South Texas, say the party’s moderates have spent too much time focused solely on enforcement.
“What we’ve had is a Band-Aid approach to the problems we’ve been experiencing, and we’re seeing those consequences,” Vallejo said.