A group of House Democrats facing a tough campaign cycle called on President Biden to take executive action on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Lawmakers from Minnesota, Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Michigan, among other states, urged Biden in a letter first obtained by CBS News to “immediately take further steps to restore order at the southern border and fix our broken immigration system.”
Mr. Biden has faced harsh criticism from Republicans and some in his own party over his approach to immigration and borders in the run-up to the November general election. That dynamic is playing out as Mr. Biden runs for another term against former President Donald Trump, his presumptive Republican challenger.
In April, CBS News polls in three presidential battleground states (Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) showed that a majority of likely voters view the U.S.-Mexico border as a major factor in their vote for president.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday on the letter.
However, the collapse of a bipartisan border agreement in the Senate earlier this year provided Democrats with an opportunity to counter the Republican Party’s long-standing attacks on the issue.
The new letter, led by Minnesota Democratic Rep. Angie Craig, points out that Republicans’ torpedoing of the deal is a sign that Mr. Biden should act on his own initiative.
“It has become clear that the current situation remains untenable, but with Republicans playing politics on border security, it is time for your administration to act,” the letter said. “We urge you to use every tool at your disposal, including executive action, to better ensure security at the southern border, interdict illicit fentanyl, and enable legal and orderly immigration.”
Among the 15 Democratic House members who signed Tuesday’s letter are Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a candidate for an open Senate seat in Michigan, and Reps. Susan Wild and Matt Cartwright, two Democratic incumbents in the state of Pennsylvania presidential battleground. Fellow Reps. Susie Lee and Steven Horsford from the politically crucial state of Nevada also signed the letter.
The lawmakers note in their letter that “all of our constituents, regardless of their congressional district, have felt the impacts of the current border situation.”
Last week, the House passed a Republican-led measure that denounced “the Biden administration’s open border policies” in a bipartisan vote of 223 to 191. Thirteen Democrats joined to 210 Republicans to support the effort, including Craig and three members who also signed Tuesday’s letter to Mr. Biden.
Similar critiques of the Republican Party also passed the House earlier this year, with low levels of Democratic support. Most Democrats, however, voted against these messaging efforts.
Democrats narrowly lost control of the House in the 2022 midterms, returning the chamber to Republican leaders for the first time since early 2019. The slim Republican majority, however, has often struggled since taking power. Democrats would only need to win a small number of seats to regain control in this fall’s general election.
Tuesday’s letter is the latest demonstration of how the border and immigration in general can be a contentious issue as Mr. Biden seeks to maintain enthusiasm among centrist-minded Democrats and more progressive voters.
In recent months, Mr. Biden has considered taking executive action to reduce illegal border crossings, which reached record levels last year. One of the moves The proposed plan would involve the president restricting asylum by invoking an authority known as 212(f) that allows presidents to suspend the entry of aliens when their arrival is deemed “detrimental” to U.S. interests. However, the administration has not yet announced new border measures.
The Biden administration recently announced a new regulations allowing large numbers of undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children to enroll in Affordable Care Act health insurance.
At a Texas fundraiser in late March, Mr. Biden repeatedly accused Trump of sowing “chaos” at the border by leading a Republican Party effort in Congress to derail the bipartisan agreement on the border. border between the Senate. Mr Biden also criticized Trump’s policies inflammatory rhetoric on immigrationafter the former president said undocumented migrants were “poisoning the blood of our country.”
CBS News reporters Aaron Navarro and Kristin Brown contributed to this report.
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