Democrats push to rein in Trump's immigration crackdown, call for bipartisan reform at the Capitol

A group of congressional Democrats on Wednesday called for immediate efforts to rein in the Trump administration's sweeping immigration enforcement operation. Standing outside the US Capitol in Washington, they spoke of bringing sanity back to the immigration system.

The call came just over a week after the midterm elections, in which Donald Trump's harsh crackdown on immigration fueled a voter backlash against Republicans. After his party's drubbing, Trump himself said the issue had been 'too tough' in certain aspects.

The press conference brought together progressive and moderate Democrats from both the Senate and the House, in a show of unity. Many attendees held signs saying 'legal pathways for long-term immigrants'. They argued for a bipartisan approach to reforms even as they prepare to take control of both legislative chambers next year.

Congresswoman Veronica Escobar of Texas said she has aspirational hopes for immigration reform but is also a pragmatist. With Donald Trump in the White House and without a supermajority in the Senate, Republican support is needed, so any comprehensive immigration reform must be bipartisan, she said. Escobar's district includes El Paso on the US-Mexico border.

Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona said there is still time this session for a deal, and that lawmakers should try to work, if not this session then the next, because they owe it to the country. He added that Republicans have said immigration reform would come as soon as there was a safe, secure border, that the border is now secure and the job was done, and that lawmakers should now right-size the immigration issue and find ways to keep families together.

Republican congresswoman Maria Salazar of Florida was slated to attend the press conference but did not appear. Salazar has taken jabs at the president over immigration, which are rare from his side of the aisle.

According to the report, Trump's aggressive mass deportation campaign and moves after he re-entered the White House in January 2025 dramatically slowed crossings at the border. Under his Democratic predecessor Joe Biden, levels of migration at the border were significantly elevated, and migration became a high-risk political topic for Democrats, who gained a reputation as being too soft on the issue.

The same report said Trump's second term has also seen US citizens and immigrants killed by immigration enforcement agents, record numbers of people held in often squalid detention conditions, and highly visible, violent tactics in the country's interior that led many voters to sour on some of his policies or at least on how they are carried out.

Trump's messages after the midterms have been mixed. He made a tentative offer to make a deal with Democrats to help longstanding, law-abiding undocumented immigrants avoid his crackdown. But shortly after those comments were recorded for TV, he named Stephen Miller as his new chief of staff, described in the report as the architect of Trump's most draconian immigration policies.

Trump has also signaled that he intends to use his presidential veto power often to block Democratic-supported legislation if it passes Congress. Experts, meanwhile, expect a barrage of investigations and oversight hearings from Democrats next year in an effort to bring accountability. Lawmakers on Wednesday said they did not want to wait that long to begin improving the system.

As a practical starting point, they highlighted two existing bipartisan bills. There was no detailed talk on Wednesday of how to abolish or even significantly reform Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), despite it being a hot topic during the election campaign.

The first bill, the American Dream and Promise Act, focuses on providing legal pathways to a green card for undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children, known as Dreamers, as well as people with temporary protections to remain in the US while their country of origin experiences serious turmoil. The report said the Trump administration has stopped recognizing many temporary legal statuses awarded under past Democratic administrations and has been deporting, or trying to deport, many who have papers.

Representative Sylvia Garcia of Texas said everyone can agree that the immigration system is broken. Lawmakers can start today on a path to build a foundation with the Dream and Promise Act, she said, and move forward next year, when they take over, to make even more reforms.

The second bill, the Dignity Act, was described as the only bipartisan, comprehensive immigration reform bill introduced in over a decade, with 35 Democratic and 20 Republican sponsors. It couples strict border security measures with some protections for undocumented people. Salazar is the bill's lead sponsor, and Escobar, one of its fiercest champions and its co-author, said she and her colleagues planned to reshape it over the next few weeks before reintroducing it in the next legislative session.

Escobar said that if the bill can be passed in the upcoming Congress, even more can be done in 2028 for immigrants, immigrant families, the economy and communities. Lawmakers need to bring sanity back to the immigration system, she said: 'We can do this. We will do this.'

Meanwhile, representative Henry Cuellar, another Texas border-area Democrat, expects to chair the House appropriations homeland security subcommittee in the new year, and thus control the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) funding. He said he has a list of guardrails to revert ICE, which comes under the DHS, to its role prior to Trump's second term.