House Democratic border hawks eye new influence next Congress

Some Democrats in competitive House districts found success this cycle by talking tough on border security, effectively neutralizing a key Republican line of attack.

And in a closely divided Congress, they’ll wield significant influence as they seek to navigate a complicated center lane, with the Trump administration on one side calling for mass deportations, and the progressive wing of their own party on the other, pushing back against stricter policies.

“Many of us are willing to work with the new administration,’’ California Rep. Mike Levin said in an interview. “But what we don’t want to do is substitute (current policy with) mass deportation, separating families. That is not the approach that I think will get us to finding common ground.”

Levin is part of a group of House Democrats — both incumbents and incoming lawmakers — who turned their party’s vulnerabilities on immigration into a winning strategy last month. Instead of playing defense on Republican attacks, they ran ads acknowledging the migrant crisis and put forth a series of proposals to address it, from more funding for enforcement efforts at the southern border to overhauling the asylum process.

This new class of Democratic border security hawks includes incoming freshmen Laura Gillen and Josh Riley, who each flipped battleground seats in New York by focusing on the influx of asylum-seekers to the state, as well as Reps. Don Davis of North Carolina and Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, the longest-serving woman in Congress.

In one ad, Riley, an attorney who beat Republican Rep. Marc Molinaro in an upstate New York swing seat, declared that “politicians from both parties have failed us on the border.”

Kaptur struck a similar theme in one spot, blaming the “far left (for) ignoring millions illegally crossing the border.”

And Gillen, a former town supervisor who unseated Republican Rep. Anthony D’Esposito on Long Island, pledged to work “with anyone from any party to secure our southern border, lock up criminals pushing fentanyl and stop the migrant crisis.”

The unified messaging on immigration and border security that played out in competitive districts was largely crafted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and party officials say it was a key reason why Democrats scored a net gain of one seat in the House — a silver lining amid the loss of the White House and the Senate. They also suggest it could provide a winning template for the 2026 midterm elections.

“From New York to California and everywhere in between, House Democrats proactively addressed border security in their campaigns this cycle – winning tough races and creating a roadmap on how to speak to the issues voters care about for 2026 and beyond,’’ DCCC spokeswoman Ellie Dougherty said in an email.

Setting the template

Given the narrow partisan divide in the 119th Congress — House Republicans won a total of 220 seats to Democrats’ 215 — working across party lines will be essential, said New York Rep. Tom Suozzi.

“We’ve got to be better about doing this on a bipartisan basis,’’ he said in an interview.

Perhaps no Democrat better exemplifies the party’s pivot on border security than Suozzi, who won a special election in February to succeed scandal-plagued Republican George Santos in a district that covers parts of Queens and the North Shore of Long Island. Suozzi, who was first elected to the House in 2016 before leaving six years later for an ill-fated gubernatorial run, has long staked out a centrist approach on immigration. His call for beefed up border security, overhauling the asylum laws and modernizing the legal immigration process were cornerstones of his campaign

Suozzi has been working with Texas Republican Rep. Morgan Luttrell to craft legislation that would address border security. “A lot of the work has been done already,’’ Suozzi said.

Democrats like Suozzi say their policies are broadly supported by most Americans: A new poll conducted last month on behalf of the National Immigration Forum advocacy group found about two-thirds of respondents back the deportation of undocumented immigrants convicted of violent offenses while a third said all undocumented immigrants should be deported.

“The most effective politician, and the most effective elected official, is the one that says what people are saying already, and that only happens if you listen to the people,’’ Suozzi said.

But some immigrants rights advocates have questioned any hawkish agenda that includes deporting undocumented immigrants and building the wall between the U.S. and Mexico that President-elect Donald Trump has talked about for years.

“What we’ve seen is a lot of elected officials who previously stood with immigrant communities trying to out-Trump Trump on immigration policy and trying to sound tough,’’ said Heidi Altman, federal advocacy director at the National Immigration Law Center. “That is a reflection of many years now of Trump … sound bites that dehumanize immigrant communities and blame and scapegoat migrants for myriad daily harms endured by Americans that actually have nothing to do with immigration.”

Progressive Democrats have also cautioned that compromising with Trump and his hard-line allies isn’t the answer.

“Voters want a solution,’’ Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the outgoing chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told CNN last month. “They want this thing to be fixed. They don’t want cruelty.”

‘Order’ and ‘common sense’

Levin, who represents a slice of southern California north of San Diego and has visited the U.S.-Mexico border several times since he was first elected in 2018, said both parties need to chart a middle ground.

“It’s very clear to me that our constituents want us to work together,” he said. “We are all in this country a product of the immigration system one way or another, so demonizing immigrants, which seems to be the playbook of some people, doesn’t solve anything. And neither does cutting funding for homeland security and some of the other more extreme things that I’ve seen. We need order, and we need common sense.”

Gillen, the incoming Long Island congresswoman, vowed to work with Trump and both parties to address immigration and the border.

“I ran on a pledge to work with anyone to fix our border and that’s exactly what I plan to do as the next representative for New York’s Fourth Congressional District,” she said in a email statement.

Levin and other Democrats backed bipartisan legislation that would have cracked down on unlawful migration across the border with Mexico. Republicans in the Senate, however, thwarted the measure earlier this year at the urging of Trump, then the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination.

Trump made immigration front and center of his campaign, promising to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, focusing first on those who have committed crimes.

In an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, he suggested he intends to try to end “birthright citizenship” for children born to undocumented parents and would deport U.S. citizens who are part of a family with mixed immigration status.

But he also left the door open to working with Democrats to pass legislation that would ensure “Dreamers” — undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children — remain in the country.

“It really remains an open question if Trump and Republicans in Congress have an appetite (for) working with us,’’ Levin said. “They campaigned on this, and I hope that now that they have the trifecta, they come to the table with realistic proposals. I think many of us on our side of the aisle are ready to work with them.”

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