Emboldened Democrats are starting to push back on Trump's immigration
plans
[August 28, 2025]
By STEPHEN GROVES
WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats were plunged into political crisis,
especially splintered on immigration and border security, after their
thorough defeat last year in an election in which President Donald Trump
made hard-line immigration action a centerpiece of his campaign.
That may be changing.
From New York to California, Democratic lawmakers are talking more about
their immigration plans, showing up at detention centers to conduct
oversight on the conditions and at times getting into confrontations
with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. It's putting a
spotlight on Trump's agenda to deport millions of people, suggesting
Democratic lawmakers are feeling emboldened to push back. Still, they
have a ways to go before advancing a unified agenda of their own.
Yet their actions show how the ground is shifting in the American
immigration debate — away from border policies to questions about the
future for millions of people who are already in the country without
permanent legal status.
“Is there an opening for Democrats? Yeah,” Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Texas
Democrat who has pushed his party for years to emphasize border
security, told The Associated Press. “Say strong on border security,
focus on criminals and all that, but do not deport the folks with good
records.”
Democrats are ramping up visits to detention centers
Across the country, Democrats have shown up — sometimes unannounced — at
immigration detention centers to check on reports of unsanitary and
unsafe conditions and draw attention to the Trump administration's
actions. Congressional Democrats have sued the Department of Homeland
Security for blocking them from making unannounced site visits, saying
they have a right to do so under federal law.
“Transparency matters. Oversight matters. Accountability matters,” said
Rep. Joe Neguse earlier this month after he and other Colorado Democrats
visited a detention center in Aurora, near Denver. “You certainly can
expect to see the Democratic members of Colorado's House delegation
continue to lean in on all fronts.”
It's a change of focus for some within the Democratic Party even from
the beginning of the year, when many lawmakers were arguing that the
party needed a new approach on immigration that emphasized stronger
enforcement. Some Democrats even helped advance several Republican bills
aimed at migrants who are accused of crimes.
Yet as the Republican president's deportation efforts ramped up this
year and ensnared people without criminal backgrounds who were caught up
in the fervor to remove noncitizens, Democrats began to mobilize.
“Hardworking, middle-class individuals — all us just looking to earn the
American dream,” said Rep. Lou Correa, a California Democrat, referring
to Alejandro Barranco, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran whose father was
arrested by U.S. Border Patrol agents in southern California, where he
lived for decades.
Barranco was at the Capitol for a July event organized by Democrats on
the House Homeland Security Committee where they decried Trump's
administration as “unaccountable, unlawful and unconstitutional.”
Republicans hold firm even as public opinion shifts
Still, Republicans believe they continue to have the upper hand in the
immigration debate. They are already pointing to Trump's success in
deterring migrants from coming to the U.S. border with Mexico.
“We've never seen such — first of all — a horrible situation with the
border as we saw under President Biden and the Democrats, only to see
all that reversed after the election. Now it's one of the most secure
southern borders we've had in years,” said Sen. Steve Daines, a Montana
Republican.
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Daines charged that Democrats are “rudderless, they're out of ideas,
and the ideas they do have are out of touch with where I think most
Americans are at, particularly hardworking middle-class Americans
and our Hispanic community as well.”
But there are signs that public support is slipping for Trump's
approach. An AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found
in July that only 43% of U.S. adults said they approved of his
handling of immigration, down slightly from the 49% who supported
his work on the issue back in March.
A poll from Gallup that was circulated widely among Democrats that
month found that almost 8 in 10 Americans say immigration is “a good
thing” for the country, an increase from 64% a year ago and a high
point in the nearly 25-year trend.
“I do think the American public is seeing this administration for
what it is,” said Sen. Alex Padilla, a California Democrat.
“It’s not just targeting dangerous, violent criminals. The vast
majority of people being arrested, being detained, being deported
even, many without due process, have no criminal convictions, no
violent history,” he added. “They’re actually people who the first
Trump administration designated as essential at the outset of the
COVID pandemic. So that cruel irony is not lost on people.”
There's still a search for consensus
Democrats are trying to seize the moment with a flurry of proposals
on immigration. Broadly, the proposals move away from policies that
have allowed large numbers of migrants to enter the country, such as
asylum and temporary protected status, in favor of expanding visas
and other means of legal immigration.
The Center for American Progress, a leading liberal policy
organization, has released an immigration framework that starts with
the imperative to “safeguard America's security.” The New Democrat
Coalition, a moderate group of more than 100 House Democrats, also
released a plan that calls for toughened border security while
“expanding safe, legal avenues for immigration.”
“What we really need to do is overall fix the broken immigration
system. It doesn't mean that we can't have border security.” Sen.
Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat, said at a town hall this month.
“We have crossings at almost zero, and I think there should be
credit given to the president for that, but why not use this
opportunity to pass immigration reform?”
Gallego, who won a Senate seat in Arizona last year while Trump also
carried the state, has released a plan that calls for tightening
restrictions on asylum and pushing other countries in the region to
accept asylum seekers.
Democratic leaders in Congress, meanwhile, are still forming their
own plans as they try to win over more liberal members who are
concerned about changing the asylum system.
Other Democrats are looking for more immediate ways to aid
immigrants who have been in the country for years but face an
uncertain new reality under the Trump administration.
Padilla said he hopes Republicans can get behind his legislation
that would open a pathway for a green card to people in the country
under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA,
and others who have lived in the country for at least seven years.
He said Republicans are starting to hear the public backlash to the
Trump administration's handling of deportations “and maybe think
differently, so we'll see if now's the time.”
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