Washington Examiner investigations editor Sarah Bedford said immigration could cost Democrats the presidency, and that they need to come to an agreement on the issue if they want any chance to regain power.
“Democrats right now, all they’re talking about is their opposition to the way Trump has carried out immigration enforcement, but they still don’t have their own consensus on what it should look like,” Bedford said on The Hugh Hewitt Show on Wednesday.
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Republicans faced their own immigration hurdle in the reconciliation package, called the Secure America Act, that passed on Tuesday.
Bedford argued that the bill, which would fund Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, should have been “an easy yes vote” for Republicans but took longer than expected.
“It’s not a controversial thing, even for moderates, to fund immigration enforcement,” Bedford said.
She said President Donald Trump doesn’t have as much leverage with the slim majority of Republicans in Congress due to ongoing controversy involving the United States’ involvement in Iran. She said that gap carried over into issues such as immigration enforcement when it should have been a “layup.”
But Bedford argued that the deal was “going to happen eventually. Democrats had exhausted all their options for blocking it.”
Democrats voted against the bill at every stage and held a “vote-a-rama” in which they repeatedly offered changes to the bill, such as ICE restrictions and body cameras.
She said Democrats need to confront “the question of what they believe immigration enforcement should look like.”
Bedford said that during the Biden administration, Democrats’ policy was to seemingly allow anyone and everyone into the U.S., regardless of their backgrounds or whether they qualified for asylum.
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She said the policy turned out to be unpopular with Americans and that it “cost Democrats the presidency likely.”
“The ‘unfettered immigration’ piece of it, that’s not something Democrats can get behind again if they want to regain power in Washington.”
