Trump floats a deal while threatening vetoes and elevating Stephen Miller
A group of congressional Democrats pushed on Wednesday for immediate efforts to rein in the Trump administration’s sweeping immigration enforcement operation and to “bring sanity” to an immigration system that Donald Trump said, after his party’s midterm losses, had been “too tough” in certain aspects.
The gathering outside the US Capitol in Washington came just over a week after midterm elections in which the president’s immigration enforcement operation fueled a voter backlash against Republicans. Sitting and newly elected Democrats — a mix of progressives and moderates from the Senate and House — appeared together in a show of unity to advocate a bipartisan approach to reform, even as the party prepares to take control of both legislative chambers next year. Many attendees held signs saying “legal pathways for long-term immigrants”. Leticia Gutierrez spoke at the press conference in Washington on Wednesday, a photograph by Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters showed.
“I have very aspirational dreams and hopes for immigration reform. But I am also a pragmatist. And as we have — as we continue to have — Donald Trump in the White House, and without a supermajority in the Senate, we need Republican support. So any comprehensive immigration reform must be bipartisan,” said Representative Veronica Escobar, a Texas Democrat whose district includes El Paso on the US-Mexico border.
“There is time still this session for a deal. We should try to work, even if we can’t get something this session, next session for a deal. We owe it to this country. We owe it to our friends,” said Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona. He added: “Republicans have been saying we will have immigration reform as soon as we have a safe, secure border. We have that right now. We did the job. Now let’s figure out how to right-size our immigration issue. Let’s figure out how to keep families together.”
The remarks followed the mass deportation campaign Trump began after re-entering the White House in January 2025, alongside moves that dramatically slowed crossings at the border. His second term has seen US citizens and immigrants killed by immigration enforcement agents, record numbers of people held in often squalid detention conditions, and highly visible, violent tactics in the country’s interior that led many voters to sour on some of his policies — or at least on how they are carried out.
Under Trump’s Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, the border saw significantly elevated levels of migration, and despite Biden’s at times harsh approach the issue became a high-risk political topic for Democrats, who gained a reputation as too soft on it.
The president’s post-midterm messages have been mixed. He offered a tentative deal with Democrats to help longstanding, law-abiding undocumented immigrants avoid his enforcement campaign — but shortly after those comments were recorded for television, he named Stephen Miller, an architect of the administration’s most aggressive immigration policies, as his new chief of staff. Trump has also signaled that he intends to use his presidential veto power often to block Democratic-supported legislation if it passes Congress.
Experts expect a barrage of Democratic investigations and oversight hearings next year in an effort to bring accountability. But the lawmakers said Wednesday they did not want to wait that long to begin improving the immigration system, pointing to two existing bipartisan bills as practical starting points. There was no detailed talk of how to abolish or even significantly reform Immigration and Customs Enforcement, despite the agency being a hot topic during the election campaign.
The first bill highlighted, the American Dream and Promise Act, would provide legal pathways to a green card for undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children — known as “Dreamers” — as well as people with temporary protections to remain in the US while their countries of origin experience serious turmoil. Trump has offered no such path: his administration has stopped recognizing many temporary legal statuses awarded under past Democratic administrations and has been deporting, or trying to deport, many people who hold papers or long-term legal options. Lawmakers pitched the bill as a chance to act before the new Democratically controlled Congress is sworn in come January, asking for Trump’s help getting it past the finish line.
“We all can agree that the immigration system is broken. But we can start today on a path to build a foundation with the Dream and Promise Act, and to move forward next year when we take over to make even more reforms,” said Representative Sylvia Garcia of Texas.
The second, the Dignity Act, is the only bipartisan, comprehensive immigration reform bill introduced in more than a decade, with 35 Democratic and 20 Republican sponsors. It couples strict border security measures with some protections for undocumented people. Its lead sponsor, Florida Representative Maria Salazar, was the one Republican slated to attend Wednesday’s event but did not appear; she has publicly criticized the president over immigration, an unusual stance in his party.
Escobar, the bill’s co-author and one of its fiercest champions, said she and her colleagues plan to reshape it over the next few weeks before reintroducing it in the next legislative session. “If we can get this passed this upcoming Congress, we can do even more in 2028 to grow and expand what we can do for immigrants, immigrant families, and our economy and our communities,” she said. “We need to bring sanity back to the immigration system. We can do this. We will do this.”
Meanwhile, Representative Henry Cuellar, another Texas border-area Democrat, expects to chair the House appropriations homeland security subcommittee in the new year — giving him control of the Department of Homeland Security’s funding. He said he has a list of guardrails to return ICE, which sits under DHS, to the role it held before Trump’s second term.