{"id":823102,"date":"2025-01-30T10:14:12","date_gmt":"2025-01-30T16:14:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/30\/democrats-are-about-to-surrender-to-trump-in-a-hugely-damaging-way\/"},"modified":"2025-01-30T10:14:12","modified_gmt":"2025-01-30T16:14:12","slug":"democrats-are-about-to-surrender-to-trump-in-a-hugely-damaging-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/30\/democrats-are-about-to-surrender-to-trump-in-a-hugely-damaging-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Democrats Are About to Surrender to Trump in a Hugely Damaging Way"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By all indications, at least nine Senate Democrats will vote to advance<\/a> the Laken Riley Act, a sweeping measure that mandates the detention of undocumented immigrants who have committed nonviolent crimes, all but ensuring that it will move forward. This is a classic GOP \u201cmessage bill\u201d: It forces Democrats to either oppose the package, creating instant ad fodder against them, or swallow the whole thing, even though it contains some awful policies that most Democrats would surely oppose in isolation.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, some Senate Democrats are making this mess worse than it has to be\u2014and in so doing, are flirting with an early surrender to Donald Trump. It suggests that some Democrats, spooked by Trump\u2019s comeback, have already decided there\u2019s no percentage in even attempting to challenge anything carrying the aura of \u201ctoughness\u201d on immigration. That doesn\u2019t bode well for their capacity to resist the terrible crackdown that\u2019s coming, but fortunately, it\u2019s not too late to find a better path.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Of particular note here: Senators John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Ruben Gallego of Arizona. When they endorsed<\/a> the bill this week, it appeared inevitable that more Democratic senators would follow, given that each seems to know how to politically survive in challenging swing states. And indeed, the nine that have now backed the bill ensure that it will get 60 votes needed to break cloture and move forward.<\/p>\n

But the way in which Fetterman and Gallego handled this rankled some Democratic senators and aides. They appeared to unequivocally endorse the bill with a haste that is gratuitous and that could make it harder politically to amend the bill later, aides told me. And both made misleading claims about the issue that could later help Trump.<\/p>\n

Senator Alex Padilla of California has been telling colleagues that rushing to endorse the bill in full is not necessary and potentially harmful. \u201cDemocrats should use the leverage we have in the Senate to demand practical and necessary improvements,\u201d Padilla told me in a statement.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Laken Riley Act, which has passed the House with 48 Democrats backing it, would require<\/a> the Department of Homeland Security to detain undocumented migrants accused of minor crimes like burglary, theft, larceny, and shoplifting, putting them on track to deportation. This is dubious policy: DHS already has the authority to detain such undocumented immigrants; the bill would merely require this. That could give DHS less<\/i> flexibility to make enforcement decisions in these cases, forcing it to detain people accused of the most minor transgressions even if DHS determines that enforcement resources might be better used elsewhere.<\/p>\n

What happened to Laken Riley\u2014a nursing student murdered by undocumented migrant Jose Ibarra after he\u2019d previously committed minor crimes\u2014was a horror, and Ibarra has rightly received<\/a> a life sentence for it. But as American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick points out<\/a>, it\u2019s extraordinarily rare for low-level offenders to go on to commit murder; now Immigration and Customs Enforcement<\/span> would be required to detain e<\/span>very<\/i> such offender, a potentially huge waste of resources that could be used to pursue more serious criminals. His case should not be the basis for such massive policy changes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Regardless, another part of the bill is potentially worse than its detention mandate. It grants state attorneys general standing to bring lawsuits against certain specific federal immigration policies if they claim their states are damaged by those policies, and to seek \u201cinjunctive relief\u201d against them. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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This could theoretically empower state attorneys general to go to a friendly judge and get injunctions blocking policies involving DHS grants of some types of protections allowing migrants to legally remain in the United States, Reichlin-Melnick notes<\/a>. Worse, he says, the bill also authorizes lawsuits that could result in the suspension of visas granted to whole countries in cases where a given country is not agreeing to accept deported migrants. <\/p>\n

\u201cImagine Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton bringing a lawsuit seeking to end all H1-B visas from India and China because those countries refuse to accept deportations of those nationals living in Texas,\u201d Reichlin-Melnick told me. \u201cThis could allow any state A.G. to threaten an international incident.\u201d Or, he said, a Paxton lawsuit might seek \u201cto block a Democratic president\u2019s grant of parole to migrants fleeing the war in Ukraine.\u201d These provisions raise serious constitutional issues and questions about state encroachment on federal immigration enforcement.<\/p>\n

Fetterman and Gallego, and several other Democratic senators, endorsed this entire bill. But as Democratic aides point out, they had the option of merely supporting moving to debate<\/i> on the bill while clarifying that it harbors serious problems. Other Democrats who now support advancing the bill took that tack<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The rush to endorse the whole thing undercuts the case for amending it later. In essence, Republicans laid a trap for Democrats, and some stepped into it. \u201cWe\u2019re frustrated that certain Senate Democrats took the bait,\u201d a senior Senate Democratic aide told me. \u201cAs a result, we could end up making some really bad immigration policy.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

The aide added that this is undercutting a potential \u201ccoordinated effort\u201d by Senate Democrats to amend provisions empowering MAGA attorneys general. That effort could have been mounted while also allowing Democrats to support the mandatory detention provision later.<\/p>\n

To be clear, the mandatory detention piece is also problematic. As Padilla points out: \u201cIt will cause significant problems, forcing ICE agents to prioritize detaining noncitizens for low-level, nonviolent offenses like shoplifting and taking away from the focus on violent criminals who endanger our communities.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But even if some Democrats want to support that provision, they can at a minimum band together to demand amendments to the parts that empower attorneys general from MAGA-land. <\/p>\n

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer will announce Thursday that enough Democrats will support the bill to move it forward, an aide says. Theoretically, Democrats can still mount resistance by demanding amendments or even by filibustering the bill at the end of debate if Republicans don\u2019t allow changes. Will Democrats do any of this? Unfortunately, it\u2019s more likely that enough want to support the current bill to enable final passage.<\/p>\n

All this should prompt us to revisit pundit claims<\/a> that Trump\u2019s victory shows Democrats must move to the center on immigration and stand more forcefully for enforcement. While that analysis contains kernels of truth, and a rethink is necessary, the problem with that prescription is in the details: What does doing this really entail?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Right now, we\u2019re seeing the dangers of overreaction<\/i> in that direction. This is what happens when Democrats decide in advance that arguments on this issue can\u2019t be won.<\/p>\n

Winning these arguments is<\/i> hard. Riley\u2019s story is horrific. In this environment, it is<\/i> difficult to argue that migrants who have committed crimes (minor, but still) don\u2019t merit this type of mandatory federal detention. But it can be done: Democratic Representatives Sean Casten<\/a> and Chellie Pingree<\/a> have made powerful cases that the bill could produce serious injustices toward the most minor offenders and deprive them of due process, along with other intended consequences. Do pundits urging a centrist stance believe Democrats should support this bill in its current form? <\/p>\n

Gallego has declared<\/a> that the bill would exempt Dreamers brought here illegally as children, which is not true<\/a>. He has asserted<\/a> that it\u2019s necessary because the Biden administration took \u201cno action\u201d on the border after the Covid-related Title 42 asylum ban lifted, which is simply false<\/a>. Fetterman has suggested<\/a> that the bill is \u201cgiving authorities the tools\u201d to prevent killings like Riley\u2019s. But that\u2019s misleading, obscuring the fact that they already<\/i> have those \u201ctools.\u201d And Fetterman has trafficked in the same distortions<\/a> of immigration data that Trump does<\/a> to portray a system more out of control than it is.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Fetterman and Gallego are both seen by pundits as having the magic key to winning working-class voters. So is such misleading public conduct OK in their eyes as a means for Democrats to reconnect with the working class? <\/p>\n

Every Democrat knows that what Republicans are really doing with this bill is elevating the notion that migrants are criminals, to justify the crackdown to come. Do these pundits believe countering that kind of agitprop is so insurmountable that it\u2019s OK to mislead people on the issue and evade the responsibility to stand up for good lawmaking at critical moments?<\/p>\n

If all of that is acceptable, then we\u2019re in a bad place. The debate over this bill bodes very badly for what\u2019s to come\u2014and it will surely get much worse than this.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Greg Sargent
Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By all indications, at least nine Senate Democrats will vote to advance the Laken Riley Act, a sweeping measure that mandates the detention of undocumented immigrants who have committed nonviolent crimes, all but ensuring that it will move forward. This is a classic GOP \u201cmessage bill\u201d: It forces Democrats to either oppose the package, creating<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":823103,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1849,265],"tags":[5438,5780],"class_list":{"0":"post-823102","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-about","8":"category-democrats","9":"tag-about","10":"tag-democrats"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=823102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823102\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/823103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=823102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=823102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=823102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}