Under the Trump administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is picking up anyone who “looks Latino,” arresting public officials, detaining immigrants with no criminal record and acting as a general enforcement arm for the president’s crime-fighting effort. But in Washington, D.C., where National Guard troops continue to patrol the streets, some Democratic lawmakers believe they might have collaborators in the GOP willing to pursue long-sought immigration reforms.
“We’ve got a long list of Democrats who want to sign on, but we are truly doing this in the Noah’s Ark way,” said Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, during a Wednesday panel at the Center for American Progress on her immigration reform bill, which would expand legal pathways for immigration. “For every Democrat, we need a Republican, and so we need more Republicans to join us in in signing on to the bill.”
Escobar, joined by Rep. Tom Suozzi, D-N.Y., links the terror of President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown with what the lawmakers say is the nation’s long-broken immigration policy. Escobar’s “Dignity Act,” they argued, offers a bipartisan response that would also disrupt the Trump administration’s seizure, arrest and detention of people en masse. But their effort arguably better highlights some Democrats’ rightward shift on immigration policy and inability to grapple with political polarization, which has all but killed bipartisanship.
“Because this is the era that we’re living in, and this is the policy regime that we’re in, it makes me even more doubtful that we’ll see any positive movement towards any sort of reform,” Brad Jones, UC Davis professor of political science and Global Migration Center faculty affiliate, told Salon.
The Dignity Act of 2025, introduced in July by Escobar and Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, R-Fla., seeks to strengthen border security with increased criminal penalties; provide eligible undocumented immigrants with an indefinitely renewable, seven-year “Dignity Status” that allows them to work; and update the legal immigration system. As of Thursday, it had 10 Republicans and 11 Democrats sign on as cosponsors.
The current bill is “less ambitious” than the 2023 version in that it no longer includes a pathway to citizenship for immigrants — a concession aimed at appealing to Republicans on account of the “political moment that we’re in,” Escobar admitted. Garnering that GOP support is also so critical that they’re waiting for more Republican legislators to sign on.
“There are a number of Republicans who are waiting for a signal from the White House, essentially waiting to see if Donald Trump will support legislation,” Escobar said, calling for supporters to put pressure on the executive branch. “The minute that the White House signals something like this is possible, I have no doubt that we could get the Dignity Act passed.”
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But Jones said that, while the “Noah’s Ark” approach is “smart,” it’s unlikely that they’ll ever receive that signal. The Trump administration is something of a “puppet master” over GOP lawmakers, cowing them into compliance with the help of loyalist, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La. Increased focus on criminality and jettisoning citizenship pathways also stands to repel progressive members of the Democratic Party, stymying the potential for immigration reform regardless, Jones said.
Plus, while comparatively moderate for immigration policy, many of the Dignity Act’s provisions are still more liberal than the current conservative majority is likely to accept. It permits immigrants with “Dignity Status” to leave the country and return, allows people to complete asylum applications in their home countries, more than doubles the visa cap and excludes family members from those counts. Trump administration policy, on the other hand, has successfully sought to strip immigrants of existing temporary legal status, detain and deport them while allocating billions in discretionary funding to the Homeland Security Department.
“This kind of legislation was, in times past, the kind of legislation that Republicans would easily support,” Jones said. “The reforms in the Reagan administration, one of the most conservative presidencies of all time — the Dignity Act makes that look like something from a left-wing politician.”
Suozzi’s apparent solution to the partisan fissure is to urge his colleagues to unite against the “common enemy” they have in “drug cartels,” that he said are making billions in exploiting migrants and U.S. law, rather than fighting with each other.
“We’ve got to win this thing for the sake of the 14 million people … in the United States of America, many of who’ve been playing by the rules” and suffering under immigration enforcement, he said. “We have to do it for our economy. We have to do it for a whole bunch of other reasons, but we also have to beat the bad guys.”
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This clarion call comes as the GOP view on cartels has hit a new extreme: over the weekend, Vice President JD Vance defended a U.S. airstrike of a suspected drug boat off the coast of Venezuela that killed 11 people as “the highest and best use of our military.” Vance received a scathing rebuke from Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., while Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno, R, came to his defense. Vance, for his apart, did acknowledge Paul’s concerns about the lack of due process in killing people merely suspected of criminal activity.
Suozzi’s emphasis on fighting drug cartels, then, signals that at least some Democrats are going to couch much of immigration reform in “the context of crime, criminality, drugs and cartels,” which is, in some ways, the “only narrative the Republican Party embraces” in the second Trump era, Jones said.
“At that point, what I’m looking at is, ‘What is the court of public opinion going to decide?’” he added, citing the decrease in Americans’ support for Trump’s immigration enforcement. “And to the extent that public opinion turns — and it seems to be turning on Donald Trump — will that persuade any Republicans to also turn against the whims of the Trump administration?”
