Congressman Greg Landsman was one of fourteen Democrats in the House of Representatives who voted alongside Republicans to denounce President Joe Biden’s border policy.
Resolution 957, which was passed 225-187 on Jan. 17, urges Biden to “end his administration’s open-borders policies,” according to the bill’s text.
While the bill doesn’t change immigration law and only sends a message to the Biden administration, immigration advocates tell CityBeat the bill’s language reinforces harmful biases against migrants, including a line in the bill that reads, “Whereas, during the Biden administration, more than 1.7 million known illegal alien ‘gotaways’ have successfully evaded U.S. Border Patrol along the southwest border.”
“We never call anybody illegal, we certainly don’t call anybody aliens, these are people,” said Julie Leftwich, executive director of Cincinnati’s Immigrant and Refugee Law Center. “The terminology and the talking about ‘gotaways’, it’s just very, very negative and derogatory.” Cincinnati’s Immigrant and Refugee Law Center provides free legal services to low-income immigrant and refugee families in Greater Cincinnati, including assistance with citizenship applications, asylum claims, family-based petitions and more. Leftwich said many people don’t realize just how many migrant families are living and working in the Cincinnati area.
“We have clients from well over 80 different countries, which most people are surprised to know that there is even that much diversity in Cincinnati,” she said. “Our office was closed for the holidays and within a day after we reopened there was something like 10 completely new calls from people who had recently arrived in the United States.”
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While the number of immigrants crossing the southern border is up, so are deportation numbers. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deported more than 142,000 immigrants in fiscal year 2023, nearly double 2022’s numbers, according to the agency’s annual report published in December. Nearly 18,000 of those deported were parents and children traveling together. By contrast, the Trump administration deported 14,400 immigrants in fiscal year 2020.
While the majority Republican-backed resolution alleges the Biden administration’s “lax immigration enforcement policies have resulted in numerous violent criminal aliens being released into United States communities,” it doesn’t enact anything beyond sending a message to the President. Still, Leftwich said lawmakers signing their names under derogatory language about migrants makes them less safe.
“When there’s a lot of hateful rhetoric, it’s very difficult for practitioners, it’s very, very difficult for clients, people are afraid to come forward for anything,” she said.
“We need to show what’s wrong with our system and how challenging it is, but we need to talk about it in a way that’s going to create actual positive change and smarter policies. I don’t think this kind of a message does that.”
CityBeat reached out to Landsman for comment on his vote on Res. 957. In an emailed statement, Landsman distanced himself from the language used by the Republican authors of the bill.
“Folks have been pushing for comprehensive immigration reform for years, and we have to get it done. The Administration could do more, such as building on last year’s increase in border personnel and pushing on authorities in Mexico to provide even more enforcement. We saw just last week that the latter made a difference. That said, the resolution was poorly worded and arguably just a “gotcha” bill. I just don’t play those games, and certainly won’t allow them to suggest I’m for an open border. Everyone knows that’s absurd, but they use these votes to twist the truth. It’s not productive. The fact is that the heavy lifting is on Congress. Everyone knows Congress and the Speaker must act. Real policy and funding solutions. The resolution does not let them off the hook. The American people are watching, and they want action. There is a bipartisan agreement on the border emerging in the Senate. Like the bipartisan agreement on the budget, this will have the votes in the House. The fact is, there is a bipartisan majority in the House. We just need the Speaker to join us, join the White House, and get this and the budget done. I’m also submitting a resolution calling on Congress to fully fund border patrol, fully fund immigration judges and personnel, and fully fund the border technology needs. Everyone that supported yesterday’s resolution should support ours, and they all should support the bipartisan border agreement emerging from the Senate,” Landsman wrote to CityBeat.
Landsman’s announcement of his newest resolution came soon after providing CityBeat with a statement on Res. 957.
CityBeat asked Leftwich what she would tell Landsman and other members of Congress to focus on as their top priority in immigration policy reform.
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“A humane system,” she said. “There are other countries that have much different processes for people that come to their borders. At least for the time period that people are in the country, whether they get to stay there or not, they are treated well. They’re allowed to work. They’re allowed to contribute.”
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This article appears in Jan 10-23, 2024.