One key Democrat believes his party must correct course on how it communicates with Americans about the U.S.-Mexico border challenge or risk ceding the issue to Republicans as the November election nears.
Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut played a crucial role in negotiating a bipartisan deal to reform America's asylum system, reduce the millions of cases mired in immigration court backlog and bolster enforcement at the border, among other issues.
His February bill, negotiated with Republican Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma and independent Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, secured the endorsements of the Border Patrol's union, the Chamber of Commerce and the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board.
However, former President Donald Trump has been positioning border security as arguably his campaign's top issue. When time came for the Senate to pass the bill, Trump made it clear to Republicans that he did not want to see it pass, and they withheld their support.
"It's incumbent upon us to repeat the truth that Republicans don't care about the border; they killed a bill that would have fixed the border," Murphy told Newsweek. "I think it would be a big mistake for us as a party to not talk about immigration, given that they have gifted us with an ability to get on the offense."
Murphy is concerned that his party hasn't repeated that message enough to the point that it's "burned in with voters." He believes Democrats could significantly reframe the issue if they speak about their party's solution and juxtapose it with the message of Republicans wanting to politicize the issue without offering solutions.
Polling suggests that Murphy may be right. On Thursday, congressional-focused outlet Punchbowl News published the results of a poll commissioned by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the body tasked with ensuring Democrats take the House.
The poll, conducted from March 5 to March 10 of more than 1,000 likely voters across 63 battleground districts, found that 33 percent of respondents said they couldn't support a candidate who didn't share their views on immigration.
When asked whether they preferred a Democrat supporting stricter immigration enforcement and immigration reform over a Republican advocating for a border wall and aggressive deportation of undocumented migrants, the Democrat won 51 percent to 44 percent among voters, the poll found.
Yet, for now, they appear weak on the issue. The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research released a poll last week that found nearly half of adults blame President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats for the border strife as opposed to 41 percent pinning it on Republicans in Congress.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has seen a record number of crossings under Biden's tenure, with encounters between the agency and migrants clocking in at 1.15 million in financial year 2024 alone. Republicans believe voters will hold Democrats accountable and won't take issue with the GOP for opposing the bipartisan deal, a measure that most Republicans condemned for not going far enough.
"Joe Biden and Senate Democrats have spent years opening the border and now that American cities are being crushed by their policies, they're trying to pretend it never happened," Philip Letsou, spokesman for the National Republican Senate Committee (NRSC), told Newsweek in a statement. "Voters know the truth and won't buy [Senate Democratic Leader Chuck] Schumer's spin."
NRSC Chairman Steve Daines—the Montana senator who's responsible for ensuring Republicans flip the upper chamber—has made the border a focus of his speeches during weekly Senate GOP leadership press conferences.
Republicans argue that the Biden administration has failed to enforce laws, with some lawmakers arguing that it has done so intentionally. The administration holds the position that current laws are not sufficient to address 21st century migration patterns. Newsweek contacted the White House for comment.
Senator Gary Peters of Michigan, chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, rejects these claims from the GOP. Like Murphy, he believes voters must understand Republicans' role in bucking the bipartisan deal. He urges his peers to tell this story as they defend control of the upper chamber in November.
"We've been working to solve the problem," Peters told Newsweek. "We had a bipartisan agreement, and Republicans don't want to solve the problem and they walked away—people need to know that."
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Alex J. Rouhandeh serves as Newsweek's congressional correspondent, reporting from Capitol Hill and the campaign trail. Over his tenure with ... Read more
