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It's been a year now since President Donald Trump said he wanted to protect young, undocumented immigrants — known as "dreamers" — from deportation. But nothing has materialized, and U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, for one, is getting impatient.
"I'm willing to work with him," the Houston Democrat said. "The bill is there. All he has to do is have his legislative policy team send out a letter that they endorse the bill."
Trump made clear in an interview with NBC last year that he had plans to work on the issue with Democrats.
"We have to do something about the dreamers," Trump said, adding that he wanted to first secure the border.
Well, the border is secure, Garcia said, and Trump still hasn't done anything to support her legislation to give a pathway to citizenship for the approximately 100,000 people living in Texas who were children when they were brought to the United States.
She's not alone in that thinking. U.S. Rep. Maria Salazar, R-Miami, used a press conference in July to say that, with border security addressed, it was time to give dreamers and others living in the shadows a pathway to legal status.
On Thursday, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., reintroduced his legislation in that chamber to also protects dreamers from deportation. He's introduced similar legislation for 24 years, picking up Republican cosponsors along the way, but never getting the bill signed into law.
"We must never stop fighting for these good immigrant families and their children who bring so much to this country," Durbin said.
Garcia said the problem, year after year, is Republicans like to talk about helping dreamers because they know it's popular in public polling, but few are really working on a real viable solution.
"They don't put their name on the dotted line, which is what is necessary for getting the bill passed," Garcia said in an interview for the Texas Take Podcast that was published on Friday.
It doesn't take much imagination to see why Republicans are more cautious on the issue. Supporting protections for dreamers can provoke cries of "amnesty" from the GOP base - a label that can be an albatross in a party primary. In fact, after Trump said he wanted to help dreamers, conservative leaning media quickly declared he was open to amnesty for undocumented migrants.
If anything, the administration is making it easier to deport dreamers to their birth countries, even if they haven't been in those places since they were infants. Department of Homeland Security has said in court documents that dreamers are not protected from deportation and that even if they had been granted protections as part of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals under former President Barack Obama, it does not give them "legal status" now.
"The bottom line is Americans support dreamers," Garcia said, citing polls that show overwhelming support for protecting them from deportation.
Trump last year seemed to make that case during the NBC interview, saying many of those brought to the U.S. as children are middle-aged now and "don't even speak the language" of their home country.
"We're going to do something about the dreamers," he said.
Garcia said she's not sure that will ever happen, but she's going to keep talking about dreamers and the plight because they need to know they haven't been forgotten.
"I'll continue fighting until we get it done," she said.
 | Jeremy Wallace, Texas politics reporter |
Who's Up, Who's Down
A daily stock market-style report on key players in Texas politics.
Up: Greg Abbott.
He pulled it off. When the White House first kicked out the idea of redrawing the state's congressional districts to give Republicans 5 more winnable seats in the U.S. House, Abbott had no shortage of obstacles. The Legislature's regular session was already over, some Texas Republicans in Congress were against the plan, and the state's congressional maps were already tangled up in the courts. But when the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling allowing the map to be used next year, it meant Abbott overcame all of it in 6 months and delivered a major gift to President Donald Trump, who desperately wants Republicans to retain control of Congress next year.
Down: Lloyd Doggett.
The longest-serving current member of Congress from Texas is done. Doggett, 79, confirmed that because of the new redistricting maps, he will not seek re-election to the U.S. House next year. The Austin Democrat first broke into elected politics in 1973 when he became a state Senator at just 26. He has been in Congress since first winning a seat in 1994. Doggett said he plans to remain active in progressive causes even after his 16th term comes to an end in January 2027. "I will continue working with the same urgency and determination as if next year were my last, which in public office it will be," Doggett said in a statement on Friday. "After that, I will seek new ways to join my neighbors in making a difference in the only town I have ever called home."
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What else is going on in Texas
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Photo by: Susan Barber
The future of THC in Texas is once again in jeopardy. Reporters Isaac Yu and John Moritz join me on this week's episode of the Texas Take to dig into how the industry is bracing for a new effort to destroy their businesses. And we'll tell you how it's going to hit Willie Nelson, who has been promoting his own THC products. Plus, what impact will U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett have on the U.S. Senate race if the outspoken Democrat jumps in, as expected and could her decision impact U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro in San Antonio?
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What else I'm reading
U.S. Rep. Julie Johnson on Friday filed to run for the Democratic primary nomination for Dallas County-anchored District 33. The Farmers Branch Democrat currently represents District 32. But as Gromer Jeffers at the Dallas Morning News reports, that district was radically redrawn this summer to cut out much of Dallas County. It now extends deep into East Texas and favors a Republican candidate.
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