In June, when President Joe Biden was still running for re-election, he issued a bold executive order that would provide a path to citizenship to undocumented individuals married to U.S. citizens. The nation’s U.S. Latino electorate was not supporting Biden to the extent it had supported past Democratic candidates; therefore, Biden’s move was intended to rectify some of the mixed messages he’d sent on immigration and earn political favor with Latino voters.
The aim of Biden’s policy is clear: keeping stable families together and not subjecting one or more members of those families to the threat of deportation.
The “Keeping Families Together” program, which went live Aug. 19, would, according to the Biden administration, impact 500,000 noncitizen spouses who, on average, have lived in the U.S. for 23 years. It would also help 50,000 noncitizen stepchildren who have U.S. citizen parents.
Because applicants must have been “continuously physically present in the United States” since 2014 and in “a legally valid marriage to a U.S. citizen” before June of 2024; and because they can’t have any “disqualifying criminal history” or pose “a threat to public safety, national security, or border security,” the aim of Biden’s policy is clear: keeping stable families together and not subjecting one or more members of those families to the threat of deportation.
Still, in a move that illustrates that they’re letting blatant xenophobia cloud any sense of decency or humanity, Republicans rushed to block the program’s implementation. Claiming that the program would cause “irreparable harm,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed suit against Biden’s program Aug. 23, and was joined by 15 other Republican attorneys general. Trump adviser Stephen Miller’s America Legal First organization is also part of the complaint. By Monday, a federal judge ruled that the suit had merit and temporarily blocked the program.
“This is a huge victory in our courtroom battle to block the Biden-Harris executive fiat giving over 1 million illegal aliens a path to U.S. citizenship,” Miller crowed in a Monday press release. “That executive decree is now frozen.”
There are an estimated 22 million people in the United States who live in mixed-status households. Immigration reform victories are rare these days, and Biden’s move to keep stable families together should have been seen by everybody in a positive light. Sure, it was a political move during an election season and, yes, ruling solely by executive order is not ideal. It also wouldn’t make up for the many ways Democrats including Biden have followed the GOP’s Republican immigration playbook, but it did signal that Democrats might be listening to immigrants.
Despite my previous arguments that Republicans have won the immigration debate, blocking Biden’s plan to keep families together shows that they continue to make strategic errors. They’re not likely to benefit politically by showing such shocking inhumanity toward undocumented individuals who have been part of this country for at least a decade or to their spouses who, remember, have the power to vote in November.
Modern political history presents two examples of immigration extremism that came back to hurt the Republican Party. In 1994, using “invasion” ads that are now considered precursors to the Trump template, Republicans convinced a majority of California voters to pass Proposition 187, which denied undocumented immigrants access to many public services. The law was finally voided in 1999, but the story doesn’t end there.
They’re not likely to benefit politically by showing such inhumanity toward undocumented individuals who have been part of this country for at least a decade.
As Gustavo Arellano, a Los Angeles Times columnist and host of “The Battle for Prop 187” wrote in 2019, “Within 20 years, California was officially a ‘sanctuary’ state, one where undocumented immigrants could get everything from free healthcare to driver’s licenses to even serve on state commissions. And many of the young Proposition 187 protesters were now leaders running the state.” Proposition 187, Arellano writes, helped turn the state of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan into “a progressive powerhouse.”
A more recent example is Arizona. One of the effects of the 2010 SB 1070 law, the so-called “show your papers” law is that voters are now delivering wins for Democrats that would have been inconceivable before.
Yet this is 2024, and Republicans have not learned. The first two promises on the GOP platform talk about stopping the “invasion” to “CARRY OUT THE LARGEST DEPORTATION OPERATION IN AMERICAN HISTORY.” (the ALL CAPS are theirs.). When pressed by Kristen Welker of NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, kept dodging the question about whether Republican policy will lead to separating families, but the Republican opposition to the “Keeping Families Together” is itself an answer to that.
“Before we even fix the problem, we’ve got to stop the problem from getting worse,” Vance said, adding later that “you’re certainly going to have to deport some people in this country.” And while there are still issues with the tough-on-immigration talk used by Biden —and now Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris— it doesn’t come close to what Republicans are saying. A Pew Research poll from April found that 59% of Americans believe undocumented immigrants should be allowed to stay in the country. The contrast between Republicans and Democrats is stark. “Roughly six-in-ten Trump supporters (63%) say there should be a national effort to deport undocumented immigrants,” Pew notes, with “Biden supporters overwhelmingly (85%) say undocumented immigrants should be eligible to stay legally if certain requirements are met — including 56% who say this should include a path to applying for citizenship.” On the question of immigration, Harris has already been cutting into the lead that Trump had over Biden. On the question of immigration, Harris has already been cutting into the lead that Trump had over Biden. And Democrats and their allies see Republican extremists blocking “Keep Families Together” as a political opportunity. “These types of actions stand against what the majority of Americans want — relief for the long-residing undocumented population, which is the top immigration priority for Latino voters,” UnidosUS president and CEO Janet Murgúia said in a statement Tuesday condemning the Republicans’ lawsuit. The last thing Republicans should want to do this close to Election Day is drive votes to the Democrats. But by opposing a sensible and humane “Keep Families Together” program, that may be precisely what they’ve done.
Julio Ricardo Varela is the founder of The Latino Newsletter. 
