{"id":27523,"date":"2025-06-30T16:11:08","date_gmt":"2025-06-30T16:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/27523\/"},"modified":"2025-06-30T16:11:08","modified_gmt":"2025-06-30T16:11:08","slug":"fewer-democrats-taking-bait-on-gop-immigration-votes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/27523\/","title":{"rendered":"Fewer Democrats taking bait on GOP immigration votes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Republicans successfully cornered some moderate House Democrats into voting on a resolution condemning the protests in Los Angeles<\/a> over Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity. But not as many Democrats <\/a>crossed the aisle this time as have in other recent votes on immigration issues.<\/p>\n

Seven Democrats joined Republicans in condemning the protests, which have become a rallying cry for liberals regarding President Donald Trump\u2019s overreach.<\/p>\n

At least one of the Democrats who voted for the motion acknowledged that the vote was more about politics than it was about law and order.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a political move,\u201d Rep. Tom Suozzi of New York told NOTUS. \u201cThat\u2019s part of the games that are played down here in Washington.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked if the motion is an attempt to put battleground lawmakers in a bad position, he said, \u201cThat\u2019s exactly what it is, no question,\u201d and \u201cit worked.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIs this resolution necessary? Probably not,\u201d Suozzi said of the latest vote. \u201cBut I do condemn violence, and I\u2019m not going to let people say that I don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many in the Democratic Party have felt pressure to embrace more hard-line positions on immigration. At the start of Trump\u2019s term, many Democrats supported the\u00a0Laken Riley Act<\/a>, a punitive immigration bill.<\/p>\n

Suozzi is something of a poster child for this trend. He flipped former Rep. George Santos\u2019 seat blue partly by\u00a0embracing border security<\/a>, and voted for the Laken Riley Act. Now he\u2019s sided with Republicans on the L.A. protests.<\/p>\n

But there were far fewer Democrats who backed the Republican-led measure this time than the Laken Riley Act, which won 48 House Democrats and 12 Senate Democrats. This vote on the L.A. protests is yet another sign that anger over the Trump administration\u2019s deportation scheme \u2014 which is going after far more undocumented immigrants<\/a> than its \u201cworst-of-the-worst\u201d mantra indicated \u2014 is shifting politics in Washington.<\/p>\n

Some Democrats in tough races aren\u2019t sprinting to the hard line when it comes to ICE\u2019s raids.<\/p>\n

Rep. Gabe Vasquez, who represents a district that the Cook Political Report has rated a \u201ctoss-up,\u201d told NOTUS that \u201cwhile we should be enforcing current immigration laws\u201d and apprehending the \u201cmost violent and most aggressive criminals on the streets, that\u2019s not what ICE is doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is the reason that people are protesting in California, and so we should have a real conversation about the enforcement overreach of this administration,\u201d he said. \u201cUntil we have that, this is all just for politics, and I\u2019m not going to give into it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Increasingly, Democrats are feeling more pressure now to resist, embracing the position that those who have committed crimes should be deported, but those who have been working in the U.S. for years should be offered a path to citizenship.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey protested something that was valid. I\u2019m against any kind of violence or destruction or anything like that, but the way ICE has done these raids has been inhumane, has been un-American,\u201d said Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, who didn\u2019t support the motion but previously supported the Laken Riley Act. His South Texas district is also rated by the Cook Political Report as a \u201ctoss-up\u201d this cycle.<\/p>\n

Gonzalez\u2019s district swung heavily for Trump last cycle, but he said he\u2019s still not intimidated by the prospect of being painted as sympathetic to criminals.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not going to work. It may work in some ultra-red, racist district, but it\u2019s not going to work in the vast majority of America,\u201d Gonzalez said. \u201cTrump and a lot of Republicans have fallen from grace in my area. Even though he won every county in my district, there\u2019s a lot of buyer\u2019s remorse.\u201d<\/p>\n

Others said the idea that Republicans could paint anyone as against law and order at this point was laughable.<\/p>\n

\u201cDonald Trump pardoned cop killers in his first week in office,\u201d said Rep. Shomari Figures, who also supported the Laken Riley Act but voted against the L.A. resolution. \u201cThey can\u2019t sit there and hold a straight face and say that law and order is what they really care about.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among the seven Democrats who voted alongside Republicans, at least one represents a predominantly Latino district: Rep. Henry Cuellar, who has been\u00a0vocal for years<\/a>\u00a0about the need for Democrats to embrace border security. His South Texas border district swung last cycle for Trump.<\/p>\n

He and Suozzi were joined by Reps. Jim Costa, Don Davis, Laura Gillen, Jared Golden and Adam Gray \u2014 almost all of whom are in battleground districts. Six of them face elections that the Cook Political Report has designated as toss-ups or \u201clikely Democratic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Republicans in predominantly Latino districts stood with their party.<\/p>\n

\u201cI fully support the right for people to protest, but I certainly do not and will not condone violence,\u201d Rep. Carlos Gim\u00e9nez said. He voted to condemn the protests.<\/p>\n

Gim\u00e9nez said the people in his Miami-area district, who might have otherwise been sympathetic to protests against ICE overreach, were put off by what they saw coming out of L.A., which is something even\u00a0advocates have been<\/a>\u00a0worried about.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were turned off by the violence,\u201d he said. \u201cIt actually didn\u2019t do anybody any good, to be honest with you.\u201d<\/p>\n

This story was produced as part of a partnership between\u00a0NOTUS\u00a0<\/a>\u2014 a publication from the nonprofit, nonpartisan Allbritton Journalism Institute\u00a0\u2014\u00a0and\u00a0NEWSWELL<\/a>, home of\u00a0Times of San Diego<\/a>,\u00a0Santa Barbara News-Press<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Stocktonia<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Republicans successfully cornered some moderate House Democrats into voting on a resolution condemning the protests in Los Angeles…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":27524,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,327,5410,409,20523,23933,23934,3549,7264,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-27523","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-congress","12":"tag-ice","13":"tag-immigration","14":"tag-immigration-and-customs-enforcement","15":"tag-l-a-protests","16":"tag-notus","17":"tag-san-diego","18":"tag-sandiego","19":"tag-united-states","20":"tag-united-states-of-america","21":"tag-unitedstates","22":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","23":"tag-us","24":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114773195666668868","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27523\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}