Democrats Have Embraced the Terms of the Immigration Debate Set by Extremists

As we approach the presidential election, there has been a flurry of headlines feigning objectivity through euphemistic niceties. Presidential hopeful Kamala Harris “talks tough on border.” Harris and Democrats “walk a delicate — and harder — line” on immigration, which, if you didn’t know, is the party’s “biggest weakness” that they are trying to “turn the tables on.”

What do these headlines really convey? The easy answer is Democrats’ “hard-right turn” on immigration. But as a longtime immigration reporter, I know there’s also a more difficult answer: a mainstream media ecosystem that has never had the range, the nuance, or the know-how to report on immigration accurately.

The deeply partisan divide on immigration — one that frames Democrats as the party of open borders and Republicans as the nation’s hard line of defense against the invasion, swarm, influx, [insert your preferred racist language here] of migrants at the border — isn’t merely the creation of pundits and politicos. This rhetoric is also a media fabrication, solidified over decades of irresponsible coverage.

Much like borders everywhere, the cataclysmic conditions at the U.S.-Mexico border are man-made — and if Harris has her druthers, soon they may also be woman-made. If elected president, Harris will join a long line of Democrats all too willing to harm immigrant communities irreparably for political gain.

Because you see, it’s mostly a mythology that Democrats alone usher in more humane immigration policies. I came to more fully understand this when I first reported on immigration full time under President Barack Obama. I covered the administration’s full-fledged assault on Central American asylum-seekers in the form of fast-track mass deportations, the return — and expansion — of family detention, and enforcement operations targeting young people on their way to school. This was deeply unpopular work at the time, and readers often pushed back on the reporting. After all, how could a president who represented progress and adopted the English equivalent of “sí se puede” — a term “rooted in the struggle of working-class Latinos” — so seamlessly become the deporter-in-chief who brought back “baby jails”? To better understand Obama’s trajectory and the frightening machinery he wielded over immigrant communities, you have to revisit former President Bill Clinton’s 1996 laws.

The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act expanded the grounds of deportation to include misdemeanors; stripped judges of the ability to grant pardons on a case-by-case basis; allowed for prolonged and indefinite detention; and subjected asylum-seekers to fast-track deportations without ever seeing a judge. Clinton helped lay the dangerous groundwork that every proceeding administration — Democrat and Republican — has expanded upon. The results have been disastrous — morally, ethically, and tangibly in the lives of undocumented immigrants and migrants in particular. It was a foregone conclusion that Democrats would eventually drop the niceties and simply adopt the same repugnant talking points and deadly policy proposals as Republicans. After all, xenophobia and anti-immigrant extremism have proven wildly successful political strategies for former President Donald Trump and the many lackeys he’s spawned.

This is not to let Republicans off the hook, of course. In recent history, there is no discounting the damage and mayhem caused by Trump, George W. Bush and his daddy, or Reagan (though in fairness, George H.W. Bush and the Gipper’s histories are a bit more complicated because they ushered in broad immigration reforms while also criminalizing large swaths of the immigrant community). But there’s something uniquely enraging about a party that routinely throws immigrant communities under the bus while having the audacity to imply that the “sensible, humane, and responsible approach to immigration” that we so desperately need is something only they will deliver.

In a piece for the New Republic, longtime immigration reporter Felipe De La Hoz detailed Harris’ pledge to continue Biden’s crackdown on asylum, expand upon an executive action that severely restricts asylum, and ramp up prosecutions of those who cross the border outside of ports of entry — including potential felony charges for repeat offenders. “With this,” De La Hoz writes, “the Democrats’ transition to a default restrictionist approach on immigration—and an adoption of MAGA’s messaging on the issue—is all but complete.”

Under previous Democratic administrations, there was at least a trade-off: more agents, surveillance, and restrictions at the southern border to punish the newly arrived came with a benefit for the long-settled. After months of public pressure from undocumented activists, in 2012, Obama announced Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which allowed a small percentage of certain undocumented immigrants to remain in the country lawfully and obtain work permits. During his State of the Union speech the following year, Obama touted that his administration was “putting more boots on the southern border than at any time in our history.” Over time, this is the push and pull on immigration that Democrats have become known for, but now officials like Harris are content to simply punish newly arrived immigrants and offer nothing in the way of even incremental progress.

This is what I meant when I tweeted during the vice-presidential debate that Democrats are moving further right on immigration. As De La Hoz noted, the Biden administration has quietly shifted Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s priorities, stepped away from mass detention, wound down family detention, and embraced the use of parole. Harris, on the other hand, offers nothing tangible on immigration; her approach thus far is merely a reaction to Trump or a rebranding of his border policies.

It’s worth noting that border policy is regularly conflated with immigration policy writ-large. There are millions of undocumented immigrants who have been in the U.S. for many years, raising families, serving as the backbone of our most critical industries, and paying taxes that keep Boomers awash in the benefits younger generations will likely not receive in the future. For these communities, there is no longer any talk of comprehensive immigration reform or a pathway to citizenship. We have relegated them to a life on the margins, doing dangerous work with few protections to our overwhelming benefit.

In a 1995 State of the Union address, these are the “illegal aliens” Clinton said Americans are “disturbed” by. “The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants. The public service they use impose burdens on our taxpayers,” Clinton said. “We are a nation of immigrants, but we are also a nation of laws. It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years, and we must do more to stop it.”

You see, the particular strand of cruelty we’re seeing in Harris’ immigration proposals has existed in the Democratic party for decades. It is a failure of my profession that more Americans don’t understand this. In his piece for TNR, De La Hoz wrote that Democrats have effectively surrendered by defaulting to a restrictionist approach to immigration and allowing their opponents to set the terms of the debate. I think we can say the same for the American media. (This well-meaning piece admonishing the left for using “migrant” because of the way the word is weaponized by the right is a good example. What the reporting fails to mention is how many newly arrived migrants identify as, well, migrants.)

There are no tidy answers for the Democrat’s rightward shift on immigration, and frankly, we’ve all had a role to play in the devolution of our country’s ability to discuss immigration in real, honest, and tangible ways — including you, dear reader.

Over the years, I’ve thought a lot about the unbridled support for immigrant communities that the American public showed during the Trump administration. It was the first time in my life and career that I saw people who weren’t overwhelmingly from immigrant communities take to the streets for immigrants. Covering one such march in Greensboro, North Carolina, I had to step aside to collect myself because I was so moved by the outpouring of love and support. It was healing to me as an immigration reporter who, for years, grappled with the silence of American voters as their immigrant neighbors were violently separated from their families through detention and deportation. And it meant something to me as the daughter of a formerly undocumented immigrant from a mixed-status family.

It pains me — truly, deeply pains me — to see how, in a few short years, we’ve gone from taking to the streets on behalf of asylum-seekers and other migrants to polling numbers that show 62% of adult voters would favor mass deportations for all undocumented immigrants. But I guess this, too, is a consequence of letting extremists set the terms of the debate. I only wish that Democrats would shift the narrative instead of embracing the same dangerous rhetoric.

Prism is an independent and nonprofit newsroom led by journalists of color. We report from the ground up and at the intersections of injustice.