Liam Conner
A group of House Democrats facing a difficult campaign cycle have called on President Joe Biden to take executive action on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Lawmakers from Minnesota, Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Michigan, among other states, urged Biden, in a letter first obtained by CBS News, to “immediately take additional steps to restore order at the southern border and fix our immigration system flat broke-bankrupt”.
Biden has faced sharp criticism from Republicans and some members of his own party over his approach to immigration and the border ahead of the November general election. This dynamic is playing out as Biden runs against former President Donald Trump, his presumptive Republican opponent, for another term.
In April, CBS News polls in three presidential battleground states (Michigan, Pennsylvania It is Wisconsin) showed that the majority of likely voters see the US-Mexico border as an important factor in their vote for president.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday on the letter.
However, the collapse of a bipartisan border agreement in the Senate earlier this year provided Democrats with an opportunity to counter long-standing GOP attacks on the issue.
The new letter, led by Minnesota Democratic Rep. Angie Craig, points to Republicans’ torpedoing of that deal as a sign that Biden should act on his own.
“It has become clear that the current situation remains unsustainable, but with Republicans playing politics on border security, it is time for your administration to act,” the letter said. “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 Tuesday’s letter are Rep. Elissa Slotkin, who is running for a Senate seat in Michigan, as well as Reps. Susan Wild and Matt Cartwright, two Democratic incumbents in the presidential battleground state of Pennsylvania. Fellow Reps. Susie Lee and Steven Horsford from the politically crucial state of Nevada also signed the letter.
The lawmakers note in their letter that “all of our constituents, regardless of our congressional district, have felt the impacts of the current border situation.”
Last week the House approved a Republican-led measure that in part denounced “the Biden administration’s open borders policies,” in a bipartisan 223 to 191 votes. Thirteen Democrats joined 210 Republicans in supporting the effort — including Craig and three members who also signed Tuesday’s letter to Mr.
Similar Republican Party criticism also past the House at the beginning of this year with a small level of Democratic support. Most Democrats, however, voted against these messaging efforts.
Democrats narrowly lost control of the House in the 2022 midterm elections, returning the chamber to Republican leaders for the first time since early 2019. The narrow Republican majority, however, has faced frequent difficulties since taking power. Democrats would only need to win a small number of seats to regain control in this fall’s general election.
Tuesday’s letter is the latest demonstration of how the border and immigration in general can be a contentious issue as Biden seeks to maintain enthusiasm among both centrist-minded Democrats and more progressive voters.
In recent months, Biden has considered taking executive action to reduce illegal border crossings, which reached record levels last year. One of the movements The issue being explored would involve the president’s restriction of asylum by invoking an authority known as 212(f), which allows presidents to suspend the entry of aliens when their arrival is considered “harmful” to U.S. interests. The administration, however, has not yet announced any new border measures.
The Biden administration recently announced a new regulation allowing large numbers of undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children to enroll in Affordable Care Act health insurance.
During fundraisers in Texas in late March, Biden repeatedly accused Trump of bringing “chaos” to the border by leading a GOP effort in Congress to destroy the bipartisan border agreement with the Senate. Biden also criticized Trump’s attitude inflammatory rhetoric about immigrationafter the former president said undocumented migrants were “poisoning the blood of our country.”
CBS News reporters Aaron Navarro and Kristin Brown contributed to this report.
