After his presidential address on Tuesday, Donald Trump’s expressed hope that “Republicans and Democrats can work together” to fix America’s immigration system wasn’t exactly reflected among members of Congress.
In Sanctuary Hall after the speech, Republicans applauded Trump’s statements, but Democrats saw little common ground.
Texas senator Ted Cruz praised Trump for paying tribute to those whose families had been killed by undocumented immigrants and heaped praise on his efforts to beef up enforcement on the southern border. Iowa representative Steve King, also a Republican, applauded Trump’s remarks and noted that family members of several people killed by undocumented immigrants were presidential guests on Tuesday.
However, King did strike one word of warning about reports that Trump was considering a path to legal status for so-called Dreamers, undocumented immigrants who were brought to the US as children and have spent their entire lives in the country.
King, a vocal immigration hawk, said: “Trump’s promise was to end that program and to bring back the rule of law.”
But of the list of campaign promises that Trump has been keeping, King presumes the president just “hasn’t gotten to that one yet”.
On the other side of the immigration debate within the Republican party, House majority leader Kevin McCarthy struck a cautious note on the president’s call to reform legal immigration. Trump’s embrace of a merit-based system, which has been echoed in proposals by some Republican senators, met some hesitation from McCarthy.
“I firmly believe in legal immigration,” said the California Republican, who has enthusiastically embraced Trump. “We’re a country of immigrants and we want to make sure it stays a country of immigrants.”
For their part, Democrats said they doubted his openness to grant legal status to immigrants, especially following a series of controversial executive orders to clamp down on illegal immigration.
Senator Kamala Harris of California said she was “concerned and a bit disturbed” by Trump’s commentary on immigrants. Congressman Joaquin Castro of Texas said Trump’s speech was filled with “dark and divisive themes” that scapegoated the immigrant community.
Representative Brad Sherman of California said the examples of immigrants Trump highlighted in his speech were unrepresentative of the undocumented population, which is estimated to be 11 million people.
“You’re talking about 11 million undocumented people who live among us who are a critical part of our society and he wants to identify three or four terrible instances as if that’s the picture,” Sherman said. “What if I created a division of the Justice Department just to collect stories of people who had been brutally murdered by folks with bad toupees? Would that be fair to our president?”
