August 25, 2025

These House Democrats seek a new middle ground on immigration

The New Democratic Coalition unveiled a plan to win back voters on immigration but they need the party’s support.

The proposals have not been endorsed by House Democratic leaders; in fact, Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar (California), the highest-ranking Latino in Congress, is leading his own working group aimed at finding a consensus position among lawmakers. But the New Democrats hope that their framework will be a rallying point for their party and that it will help Democrats find unity on immigration upon the caucus’s return to Washington next week.

Consensus has been elusive. The Democratic Party’s ideological flanks have historically sparred on the issue. Broadly speaking, liberals often seek firm pathways to citizenship for migrants and limits on border security operations. Moderates, meanwhile, are often open to a broad range of solutions on the status of undocumented migrants and show interest in expansions to border enforcement. These divides have led to reform efforts crumbling.

Finding a position the whole caucus can get behind is “imperative” if Democrats want to regain credibility among voters to win back the House majority in 2026, said Rep. Gabe Vasquez (D), who spearheaded the framework and is known for flipping a GOP-held district along the New Mexico-Mexico border that has repeatedly supported Donald Trump for president.

“I think we do have to acknowledge that the American people have lost faith in the Democratic Party when it comes to border security,” he said in an interview. “We have to look to folks in border communities and border districts to pull the Democratic Party in the right direction.”

Democrats are at a disadvantage with voters on the issue of immigration. A YouGov poll conducted in May found that Republicans had a seven-percentage-point advantage on the issue that month, down from a 12-point gap in an August 2024 YouGov poll. A July Wall Street Journal poll found that 45 percent of voters believed Republicans in Congress were best able to handle immigration, while only 28 percent of voters said the same for congressional Democrats; 17 percent of respondents said they trusted neither party to handle the issue.

House Democrats believe they have an opportunity to reclaim the narrative as voters’ favorability toward Trump’s handling of immigration continues to drop. An Economist/YouGov poll released last week showed 53 percent of U.S. adult citizens disapproved of Trump’s handling of immigration, an increase of three percentage points compared with July.

The Trump administration’s success in clamping down on border crossings has been overshadowed by a slapdash approach to mass deportations, particularly the detainment of undocumented migrants without criminal records. And that is rankling Hispanic GOP lawmakers who fear they could face political backlash during the midterms next year.

Stephanie Valencia, chief executive of Equis Research, said this “creates a moment of opportunity” for Democrats to seize by reframing the debate with a “proactive vision for the future,” but she warned that “Democrats can’t just be against what Trump is for.”

Several New Democrats said they successfully avoided the backlash faced by the party up and down the ballot on immigration in 2024 by campaigning aggressively on the issue.

Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-New York), who flipped a GOP-held district in early 2024, credits adopting a strict message on border security enforcement that included deporting criminals and closing the border temporarily to asylum seekers for his success. Rep. Laura Gillen (D-New York) ran on a similar platform and successfully flipped another GOP-held district in Long Island in November. But their harder-line positions were not adopted by the Harris campaign, which argued for striking a balance between acting with compassion toward migrants and upholding immigration law.

“The American people were frustrated with the lack of action and with the disorder they saw [at the border]. And they, I think, voted accordingly,” said Rep. Greg Stanton, a Democrat who represents a district on the Arizona-Mexico border and drafted the initial framework for the group.

The resounding loss for Democrats during the 2024 election led many in the party to advocate that Democrats take a more aggressive stance on border issues. Roughly 50 House Democrats supported GOP bills earlier this year that instructed immigration officials to detain noncitizens who had committed a crime and that made it illegal to flee from border agents near the U.S. southern border. And House Democratic leaders began reiterating that their caucus supports border security enhancements.

These actions have not had the support of every member of the Democratic caucus and have angered some liberal Democrats. Now, however, there is a willingness to get all House Democrats on the same page among leaders across the ideological factions. Members of the New Democrats, the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the Blue Dog Coalition have had conversations that lawmakers say have been more constructive than before.

“I think there’s more people that just want to solve this problem. I find my conversations with people to just be much more reasonable than they were a year ago,” Suozzi said.

Looking ahead, House Democrats have lately talked about immigration through an economic lens. The New Democrats’ framework often links border security and immigration to its effects on the economy, which polling regularly finds to be the top issue for voters.

For example, Trump’s mass deportation efforts are creating work shortages in the agriculture and hospitality sectors. In response, the group proposes creating a new temporary nonimmigrant visa category for industries experiencing occupation shortages and a new caregiver visa to help families access affordable child and elder care, among other measures.

They also propose issuing 100,000 additional green cards for international graduates from U.S. universities, and opening a special visa program for immigrants creating start ups. They argue these reforms would simultaneously incentivize innovation, benefit the economy, and shore up national security by keeping talented individuals in the United States (and away from foreign adversaries).

With respect to border security, the group calls for keeping the Department of Homeland Security adequately funded so it can retain no fewer than 22,000 Border Patrol agents, provide raises to agents on the lower end of the pay scale, and purchase upgrades to its technology. The framework also states that while undocumented immigrants who have committed felonies should be detained and deported, the federal government should re-establish due process in such matters.

The New Democrats offer recommendations on what should be done with migrants currently in the U.S. without authorization. Vasquez, who regularly crosses into Mexico to visit family, said Latinos were irate that the Biden administration and liberal cities offered benefits such as housing and financial support to asylum seekers and the undocumented while they waited, at times decades, to gain a visa or permit through a lengthy legal process. The framework proposes creating a legal pathways for official status, and in some cases citizenship, for those who meet required criteria and who have no criminal records.

The framework is not legislation, but lawmakers who crafted it hope planks of it could inform future bills. If Democrats win the majority, moderate lawmakers such as Suozzi see an opportunity to find compromise with enough Republicans to make some of the policies law before the 2028 election. Stanton, who leads the New Democrats’ campaign arm, said that candidates seeking to flip Trump districts and who are endorsed by the group would be given the proposal to campaign on.

Some Democrats, especially those who served in the last Democratic majority, said they worry that their “big tent party” may not come around to striking compromise ahead of the midterms.

Vasquez, who was elected in 2022 under a GOP majority, is more hopeful. Democratic leadership tapped him to serve as a conduit between factions given his personal experience living in a district that went for Trump and that Vasquez has won twice. He believes he’s “helped some of our progressive members better understand the security challenges that we face at the border from a very pragmatic place.”

“In this moment, we need unity amongst our party, and we may not agree on every single detail of this framework,” he said. “But look, we’re in Congress. It’s a give-and-take. You can’t always get what you want. You cannot be an absolutist or a purist. You have to do what’s good, and if that means incremental steps towards better immigration policy, we have to be willing to go there.”

By:  Marianna Sotomayor
Source: The Washington Post

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