By Mondaire Jones*
May 29, 2024, 17:41 PM EDT
For more than a year, Republicans in Washington like our Congressman Mike Lawler have criticized the impact of the immigration crisis in New York. But the last few months have made it clear that Lawler and his Republican friends in the House and Senate are more interested in political games than in actually providing solutions to the problem.
Like many of the most controversial issues, resolving the border crisis is complicated. We need a secure border, but there is no magic button that a president can activate that will stop migration.
That’s why we need funding and new federal bills. Republicans in Washington like Lawler have demanded border bills over the past year in television interviews and on social media. That is until recently when they finally received what they demanded.
A bipartisan group of senators, including some of the most conservative in the country, proposed legislation that could solve several of the problems at our border.
This bill would give the Secretary of Homeland Security new authority to close the border, implement new emergency restrictions that would require closing the border in untenable situations like what we see today, and would also increase the number of requirements to obtain asylum.
Like all legislation, it had elements that offended members of both parties. But experts like the Border Patrol Union, a conservative group, backed the bipartisan legislation as a step forward toward a secure border.
But just as Congress was about to solve the problem, Donald Trump stepped in. Trump publicly and privately threatened Republicans who supported the legislation because, as he said several times, he wants chaos at the border so he can deny President Biden a legislative victory and continue blaming Democrats for the migrant crisis on the campaign trail. .
Unfortunately, as with his vote for insurrectionist House Speaker Mike Johnson and his support of a sham impeachment against President Biden, Rep. Lawler showed once again that he is spineless and will never stand up to Trump. Instead of accepting this bipartisan bill to secure our border, Lawler did not want to risk angering Trump by speaking in favor of this legislation.
Given his influence in the House’s small Republican majority, Lawler could use his voice to insist that House Speaker Johnson allow representatives to vote on the bill. But he hasn’t done any of this. So, now that President Johnson said the legislation would be “dead on arrival” in the House if the Senate approved it, Republicans in the Senate decided to abandon the bill altogether.
Lawler, what he thinks about irrelevant and ridiculous topics like pizza ovens in New York City, has had nothing to say about Trump’s intervention and the blocking of the bipartisan bill by his close ally, President Johnson .
This is a pattern of Lawler’s behavior. Before running for Congress, he spent his life as a Republican operative, working literally every day to advance MAGA Republican extremists like Donald Trump and end what’s left of civility and bipartisanship in Washington. In addition to serving as executive director of the New York State Republican Party, Lawler was a delegate to Donald Trump’s convention in 2016 and worked to re-elect him in 2020 on the payroll of a multimillion-dollar effort.
Congressman Lawler may remain silent about this bipartisan border security bill, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t ask him about the issue. He needs to take some responsibility for the immigration crisis and for voting last year to reduce resources that help protect our border and keep our communities safe. He is willing to defund our border security while he talks about the urgency of the situation on television. His voters in the Lower Hudson Valley should pay attention to what he does, not what he says.
Unlike my opponent, I have consistently voted in favor of funding to secure our border and support comprehensive immigration reform that would allocate adequate resources to secure our border, while establishing a path to citizenship for undocumented people who have not violated the law.
It is a travesty that Republicans in Congress refuse to work with Democrats on a real proposal to secure our border and address the immigration crisis. We need leaders willing to confront the extremes of both parties and meet this moment with urgency and determination. I intend to be that leader once again for the Lower Hudson Valley, which requires defeating Mike Lawler in November.
Mondaire Jones is a former congressman and congressional candidate.