Rep. Jeffries, Latino Democrats meet on immigration strategy as Trump crackdown looms

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries met Wednesday with Latino Democratic lawmakers to sharpen the party’s strategy connected immigration arsenic President Trump barrels up with a wide crackdown that includes utilizing the subject to unafraid the borderline and threats to deport millions.

The Brooklyn lawmaker and his enactment squad met with the Hispanic Caucus to forge Democratic unity down a connection of enactment for tightening borderline information portion resisting Trump’s arguable deportation program and his effort to extremity birthright citizenship.

“We had a large treatment astir priorities for the American people, including making definite we unafraid the border, hole our breached migration system, basal up for Dreamers and workplace workers,” Jeffries told reporters arsenic helium near the gathering connected Capitol HIll.

An American emblem and Mexican emblem alert on the US-Mexico borderline successful El Paso. (CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP via Getty Images)

Jeffries and different Democrats are seeking to walk a tightrope connected immigration by moving the enactment to the close connected borderline security, which galore enactment leaders spot arsenic a large albatross, portion maintaining a unified stance against Trump’s wide deportation crackdown.

Some mean Democrats, including a fewer members of the Hispanic Caucus from borderline states, would similar the state to vote with Trump’s Republicans connected immoderate fashionable immigration-related measures, similar the GOP-sponsored Laken Riley Act authorizing deportation of undocumented immigrants arrested for shoplifting and different petty crimes.

Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, a southbound Texas moderate, warned enactment leaders not to archer him however to ballot connected arguable measures.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, an outspoken advocator for immigrants, told Punchbowl News that she believes taking a beardown stance connected the contented tin assistance Democrats triumph backmost the House.

“We’re wrong striking region of winning the bulk back,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

Many progressives, including immoderate Latinos from deep-blue municipality districts similar Ocasio-Cortez, privation Jeffries to pb the enactment successful a overmuch much assertive pushback against Trump’s migration crackdown.

Jeffries, who stands to go House Speaker if Democrats regain power of the House successful 2026, appears to spot Trump’s economical policies and planned taxation cuts for the affluent to beryllium much effectual cudgels to usage against the caller Trump administration.

He replied to a question astir migration implicit the play connected “Meet the Press” by changing the taxable to Democrats absorption connected the economy.

On Wednesday, helium stressed that the gathering with the Hispanic lawmakers was not lone astir migration but besides aimed astatine moving to “drive down the precocious outgo of surviving for mundane Americans.”

Many Democrats judge Trump’s anti-immigration connection was a cardinal operator of his amazingly decisive triumph implicit Kamala Harris successful the November election.

But they judge Trump whitethorn suffer nationalist enactment if his crackdown goes excessively far, particularly if helium creates chaos connected farms, mill floors and successful cities by rounding up millions of undocumented immigrants.