The glaring absence of Hispanic or immigrant representation in the bipartisan Senate border policy negotiations has gone largely overlooked, despite repeated appeals to diversify the voices at the table.
The ongoing snub of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) puts in question whether the group’s political clout has grown on par with its numbers.
Talks have been mostly led by Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), though others including Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and John Thune (R-S.D.) have publicly chimed in.
The White House has endorsed the talks, which appear to be eyeing a trade of hawkish border policy reforms for funding for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, as has Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).
For months, CHC members have raised their concerns publicly and privately, but the calls for inclusion have apparently gone unheard.
“The old saying that ‘if you’re not in the room, you’re on the menu’ — it may very well be the case here. And so, it is alarming to me,” said Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), the most senior CHC member in the Senate.
“It would be like writing civil rights legislation and voting legislation and having none of the African American members of the Senate or the Black Caucus in the House be involved.”
Neither the White House nor Schumer’s office responded to multiple requests for comment.
Historically, the CHC has not played a significant role in enacted border policy legislation, though, over the past decade, the group has been involved both in comprehensive and piecemeal efforts to reform border and immigration laws, none of which have made it to the finish line.
Immigration advocates are infuriated by the lack of transparency in Senate negotiations, in part because they mirror legislative processes in 1996 and 2006 that engendered enforcement-centric border and immigration policies that included few, if any, benefits for immigrants.
While the exact contents of the negotiations remain unknown, CHC members and advocates say negotiators such as Murphy and Lankford lack the lived experience of immigrant communities who have dealt with the business end of border laws written behind closed doors.
“The CHC has been the lead voice and advocate on immigration policy in Congress for decades. Many of the members have personal experiences, whether they’re immigrants themselves or the children of immigrants,” said CHC Chair Rep. Nanette Barragán (D-Calif.).
“And that’s why this is so disheartening for the caucus to be kept out of the room. It’s deeply troubling, and you know, we still are available and ready and we need a strong voice at the table that represents our communities, but also understands the immigration issues and what’s at stake.”
A highly publicized sticking point in negotiations has been the executive’s power to parole immigrants — essentially to grant legal status by fiat — in individual cases.
The focus of political debate has centered on the Biden administration’s use of parole to allow recently arrived migrants to enter or remain in the United States and work under certain conditions.
But advocates say parole’s purpose goes far beyond that and serves an array of humanitarian purposes, including allowing foreign nationals without visas access to emergency or specialized medical care; allowing beneficiaries of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and green card applicants to travel internationally; or allowing undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens to regularize their status.
“Border management and crossings and whatnot needs to be managed, but it cannot be done at the cost of the long-term workforce that’s been here working and paying taxes,” said Rebecca Shi, executive director of the American Business Immigration Coalition.
“And [removing parole] is not only not fair, but it also hurts the economy. And it’s not supported by the majority of American voters who either live with an undocumented person in their household, or you know, somebody in their neighborhood or in their Little League or someone they work with.”
Shi said 1.1 million U.S. citizens are married to undocumented immigrants, and in a vast majority of cases, parole is the only path for those spouses to regularize their status.
The disparity between prevailing border policy recommendations and the reported contents of negotiations have raised suspicions that the deal’s policy outcomes come a distant second to the politics of presenting voters with an appearance of forward motion on border enforcement.
“One has to wonder, if by assertively leaving out members of Congress who represent some of the most directly impacted border communities and cities experiencing this issue, one has to wonder if that means that they were not necessarily looking at this negotiation as a way to truly address the problem,” said Clarissa Martinez De Castro, vice president of the Latino Vote Initiative at UnidosUS.
The CHC’s exclusion is also hurting Biden administration allies outside of government.
José Borjón, a political strategist at Akin Gump, said it “makes it harder” for consultants to guide their clients through the workings of immigration policy in Congress.
“There are a number of people at the White House who know exactly who the CHC members are. I’m hopeful they’re not leaving them out of the meetings with intent, but rather strategically to be added at a later date,” said Borjón. “It’s never too late to rectify.”
But CHC members largely see a strategy of excluding the group to build a package that will thread a bipartisan path around opposition from immigration advocates.
Menendez said Biden’s calculus hinges on the balance between a legacy item — Ukraine — and a perceived political liability at the border.
“And, you know, the president just hasn’t had a long history of engagement with the Hispanic community. That’s just a reality,” he said.
But Senate leadership, according to Menendez, is excluding the CHC out of political expediency.
“As it relates to Senator Schumer, he’s just made a calculus, that at the end of the day, he’s going to seek to roll us because he figures that with Ukraine aid, Israel aid, Indo-Pacific aid, and with enough Republicans coming on board for it, that he doesn’t necessarily need us even if we will object and vote against it for argument’s sake,” said Menendez.
“It’s a very crass political judgment, that somehow, ‘They’ll be OK, they’ll get over it,’ that type of thing.”
Menendez added that the CHC has historically lacked a willingness to punch back, unlike the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), the model for demographic-minority representation, which has shown a willingness to “shake the institution and the establishment to its core.”
“The Hispanic Caucus is more, you know, has historically been — not talking about the present leadership — more accommodating, less confrontational, and the result of that is that there is the sense that you can roll them,” said Menendez.
Language from a potential Murphy-Lankford agreement is expected as early as Tuesday, and a bill with backing from President Biden, Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) would likely sail through the Senate, even assuming opposition from the four CHC members and some progressives.
The math could be more difficult in the House, where a majority of the CHC is likely to oppose the bill, potentially with support from some members of the CBC, the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus and the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
The CHC has 37 voting members in the House, though four of them recently voted — along with 10 other Democrats — for a resolution condemning Biden’s border policies and might be more likely to vote for a Murphy-Lankford deal.
And it’s unknown whether Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) would even bring such a bill to the floor if it falls short of GOP hard-line demands on the border.
It’s also unclear how many Republicans would vote against a deal out of opposition to Ukraine funding.
“They’re gonna have to count on a lot of Republican votes to pass something like that. I mean, look, you had Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell saying that they would never get these kinds of deep changes to immigration policy and asylum policy, even under Donald Trump,” said Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas).
The support of figures including Graham and McConnell has many Democrats perplexed at the structure of the deal, which reportedly includes few, if any, concessions to help immigrant communities straighten out their paperwork.
“Lindsey Graham said that they’re basically overjoyed that they’re going to be able to get concessions on immigration policy without even offering a path to legalization for people like Dreamers. And so it just doesn’t make sense, the way this negotiation has been carried out,” said Castro.
—Updated at 1:21 p.m.