A group of House Democrats facing a tough campaign cycle has urged President Biden to take unilateral action on the US-Mexico border.
In a letter that CBS News obtained, legislators from Minnesota, Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, among other states, urged Biden to “immediately take further action to restore order at the Southern border and fix our broken immigration system.”
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Mr. Biden has received heavy criticism from Republicans and some members of his own party for his attitude toward immigration and the border ahead of the November general election. That dynamic is unfolding as Mr. Biden seeks re-election against former President Donald Trump, his presumed Republican adversary.
In April, CBS News polls in three presidential battleground states (Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) revealed that the majority of potential voters consider the United States-Mexico border to be a major factor in their presidential vote.
A White House spokesperson, Angelo Fernรกndez Hernรกndez, reacted to the letter by email, saying that “congressional Republicans chose to put partisan politics ahead of our national security and rejected what border agents have said they need.”
“We continue to call on Speaker Johnson and House Republicans to pass the bipartisan deal to secure the border,” Hernรกndez stated, citing Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson’s strong opposition to the agreement.
However, the failure of a bipartisan border agreement in the Senate earlier this year gave Democrats an opportunity to confront long-standing Republican criticisms on the topic.
The new letter, led by Minnesota Democratic Rep. Angie Craig, cites Republican opposition to the accord as evidence that Mr. Biden should take action of his own.
“It has become clear that the current situation remains untenable, but with Republicans playing politics on border security, it is time for your administration to act,” the letter read. “We urge you to use all tools at your disposal, including executive action, to better address security at the southern border, interdict illicit fentanyl, and allow for orderly legal immigration.”
Among the 15 Democratic House members who signed the letter on Tuesday were Rep. Elissa Slotkin, who is competing for an open Senate seat in Michigan, and Reps. Susan Wild and Matt Cartwright, both Democratic incumbents in Pennsylvania, a presidential battleground state. Representatives Susie Lee and Steven Horsford from Nevada, a politically key state, also signed on to the letter.
The congressmen state in their letter that “all of our constituents, no matter our congressional district, have felt the impacts of the current border situation.”
Last week, the House passed a Republican-led motion that, in part, condemned “the Biden administration’s open-borders policies” by a vote of 223 to 191. Thirteen Democrats joined 210 Republicans in backing the move, including Craig and three other members who signed Tuesday’s letter to Mr. Biden.
Similar GOP criticism cleared the House earlier this year, with only a few Democratic votes. Most Democrats, however, have voted against these messaging attempts.
Democrats narrowly lost control of the House in the 2022 midterm elections, handing it back to Republican leaders for the first time since early 2019. However, the slim GOP majority has battled on numerous occasions since assuming office. Democrats would only need to win a small number of seats to retake power in this fall’s general elections, and the border is expected to play a key role in House races between now and Election Day.
The National Republican Congressional Committee’s communications director, Jack Pandol, responded to the letter in an email, stating that “extreme Democrats play Lucy with the football every election year, promising to lock down the border after opening the floodgates the year before.”
“It’s a pathetic charade that says more about Democrats’ political freakout over their open border policies than it does about their willingness to end the crisis.” Pandol spoke.
Tuesday’s letter is the latest example of how the border and immigration in general can be divisive issues, as Mr. Biden seeks to preserve support from both centrist Democrats and more progressive voters.
Mr. Biden has been exploring unilateral action in recent months to curtail illegal border crossings, which reached record highs last year. The president is considering restricting asylum by exercising the authority known as 212(f), which allows presidents to block the entrance of foreigners deemed “detrimental” to US interests. The administration has yet to announce any new border procedures.
The Biden administration has released a new regulation that allows a substantial number of undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children to enroll in the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance.
During fundraisers in Texas in late March, Mr. Biden repeatedly accused Trump of causing “chaos” at the border by leading a GOP campaign in Congress to derail the bipartisan Senate border agreement. Mr. Biden has also slammed Trump’s aggressive immigration rhetoric when the former president claimed that undocumented migrants were “poisoning the blood of our country.”
