Longtime foes must work together to protect Dreamers

COMMENTARY: There’s been a cloud hanging over the borderlands since Donald Trump became president. It’s been growing darker with each passing day. At least that’s how it’s felt to me as too many of Trump’s campaign promises related to border and immigration issues have become very real and cruel actions toward immigrants.

The darkest days have come since we learned that the Trump administration essentially kidnapped and traumatized thousands of children. Seeing so many on social media display a stunning lack of empathy for folks seeking a better life has added to my discouragement.

For a couple of hours on an evening in July, however, I felt the sun briefly shine through the clouds when the LIBRE Initiative hosted a panel discussion on immigration reform in Las Cruces.

The nonprofit activist group is backed by the controversial Koch Brothers. It’s holding forums across the nation as part of a push for immigration reform – at the very least, legal status for 1.8 million young people we call Dreamers.

I went to the forum with curiosity. The Koch Brothers helped fund the rise of the tea party that amplified anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States and made passing immigration reform nearly impossible. And that arguably helped pave the way for Trump’s presidency.

But the pendulum swings in politics. Today the Koch brothers are putting their money and political clout into opposing family separations, seeking legal status for Dreamers and promoting reforms to improve the asylum process that many Democrats also want.

And they’re reaching across the political aisle. LIBRE recently spent money on political ads thanking a handful of U.S. House Democrats – including New Mexico’s Michelle Lujan Grisham and Ben Ray Luján – for pushing legislation to protect Dreamers.

I also went to the forum to support my girlfriend, Sarah Silva, a community organizer and life coach who started the Las Cruces organizing group NM Comunidades en Acción y de Fé – and a Democrat. LIBRE staff asked her to join the panel, and she agreed.

The forum felt as bipartisan as the unsuccessful immigration reform efforts of the George W. Bush presidency. I’m looking for hope as our nation heads down a frighteningly nativistic road, so a bipartisan discussion is encouraging.

Silva sat between Jon Barela, who runs a nonprofit economic development group in the El Paso, Ciudad Juárez and southern New Mexico region, and Lt. Gov. John Sanchez. Three Latinos with very different politics didn’t always agree, but spent the evening having a civil discussion. If these folks were tasked with finding a workable immigration reform compromise, I thought, they could do it.

‘A very powerful team’

Barela, a former state Economic Development Department secretary and U.S. House candidate, blasted the politics of today’s Washington.

“What makes this issue so complex right now is we don’t have adults in the room,” the Republican said in a plea for civility. He cited a Georgia Republican gubernatorial candidate’s controversial “deportation bus” ad as an example, calling it “very racist” and saying such rhetoric from his own party is “horrifying.”

Barela also pointed a finger at the Democratic Party, saying former President Barack Obama failed to prioritize immigration reform even during the two years his party had majorities in the U.S. House and Senate.

He’s right. I would argue the degree to which each party gets blame for paralysis on immigration reform. But it’s unquestionable that both parties have contributed to the problem.

Sanchez is a more ideological conservative than Barela, but he’s the sort of statesman Barela says we need in government. Sanchez, in his years presiding over the N.M. Senate, has treated Democrats with respect and helped foster a culture of civility and compromise in that chamber. At a time when so many Republicans – and politicians in general – have abandoned civility, Sanchez sets a positive example.

At the forum, Sanchez said immigration reform should prioritize public safety and national security. He said he fears an event in a border community like the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. While Sanchez said reform must also include “a compassionate human perspective,” he focused most of his remarks on security and economics.

By contrast, Silva, who now works for Faith in Action, a national, faith-based organization that supports local organizing groups like CAFé, spoke about people. While acknowledging the push and pull economic conditions create along the border, she brought the conversation down to the ground.

Silva shared the story of her grandfather, who came to the United States from Mexico under the bracero program (that’s the pull to the United States). She talked about how the United States sought to deport many of those Mexican workers when they were no longer needed (the push back). She shared that her grandfather was fortunate to have a white, male, business-owning sponsor – a generous man – who was willing to help him stay in the United States. Others were not so fortunate, and our nation essentially discarded them.

Silva talked about Las Crucens who today are opening their homes to asylum seekers. She asked why our nation as a whole can’t be as generous as those people.

Barela moved into the ideological space between Sanchez and Silva. He said the lieutenant governor brings a business perspective – which he tends to share as an economic development professional – while Silva was shining light on moral issues. If such people can work together, “they make a very powerful team,” Barela said.

He and Silva praised each other for their courage, their hearts and their work – a Republican and Democrat sharing a moment of genuine connection in front of an ideologically diverse crowd of about 50. I don’t think I’ve witnessed anything like that since then-U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., came to Las Cruces in 2008 to praise the late Pete Domenici, a former Republican U.S. senator. A decade ago, Dodd gave a touching speech about civility and respect and said Washington needs more people like Domenici.

Between optimism and cynicism

Seeing that moment of connection between Silva and Barela in even more divided times than Dodd and Domenici faced had the optimist in me near tears. I’m starved for such civility from our leaders.

And yet, the cynic in me remembered history. We were so close to immigration reform during the second Bush’s presidency. He and so many other Republicans genuinely wanted comprehensive immigration reform that would deal with the mess we’ve created in a mostly humane and reasonable way.

We were almost there between 2005 and 2007. Instead, we got the tea party movement, and eventually the nativist takeover of the GOP and then our government. “I never in a million years thought I would see the Republican Party go where it’s gone,” Barela said at the forum.

I didn’t think it would get this bad either. The United States has a history of naiveté about its history of racism and its role in the world as an empire. It’s so easy to look away or get distracted. We want to believe the best about our nation and ourselves, even when it simply isn’t true.

Too many Republicans cowered in fear during the tea party coup instead of leading with moral courage and getting immigration reform done.

Too many Democrats kicked the can down the road for fear of losing congressional seats in conservative districts. Back in 2007, union supporters, including then-Sen. Obama, helped conservatives kill immigration reform. They didn’t want more non-unionized workers in the United States taking jobs. And, as Barela correctly pointed out at the forum, Obama failed to prioritize immigration reform as president.

Meanwhile, there were the Koch brothers, helping fund the rise of the tea party. And there was dark money on both sides, driving deeper wedges between us and making any sort of civil discourse immensely challenging.

But on that July evening, it felt like it might not be too late to choose a different path. Barela urged people in the audience to “seek candidates who have a moral compass… but who don’t see compromise or working with the other side as a form of weakness.” And Jorge Lima, senior vice president for policy at Americans for Prosperity, another Koch brothers-funded organization, who moderated the discussion, said, “The only way we’re going to get around the rhetoric in political ads or elsewhere is if we engage with each other in our communities.”

Which is what Barela, Sanchez and Silva were there to do, and to model. Following their panel discussion, those in attendance talked with each other in small groups.

A moral imperative to act

At the Las Cruces forum, Lima made clear that LIBRE is seeking a narrow immigration compromise before the November elections – legal status for Dreamers, possibly in exchange for additional border security funding.

Long-term, LIBRE wants comprehensive immigration reform, Lima said. “There will be another inflection point,” he said. “There will be another time, and we want to make sure everyone is ready.”

I hope the Koch brothers and their organizations have learned from the role they played in creating this mess, and that they’ll act differently going forward. Time will tell, but these forums are a positive step.

But in spite of the optimism I felt that evening, I honestly doubt there’s any immigration compromise to be had before the November elections. Our nation’s political system is paralyzed by decades of dysfunction, years of dark money driving the electorate into extreme polarization, the cruelty with which Trump treats immigrants, the reality-television tone of his presidency, and the willingness of the GOP-controlled Congress to do the bidding of a president who isn’t even a real Republican.

In addition, I suspect comprehensive immigration reform is lost for a generation. The Republican Party, with exceptions like Barela, has given in to its nativist base. It’s encouraging to see some push back against the madness, but the GOP is no longer the party they once knew.

The Trump presidency has also helped clarify the Democratic Party’s historic role in causing this mess – through inaction at times, and at others through explicit action. The Democratic Party has too often prioritized election victories or other groups of people over immigrants. I’m not yet convinced that’s changing.

And yet, if anyone has enough influence with the people who currently control Washington to make something happen, it’s the Koch brothers. If all we can get right now is safety for Dreamers, shouldn’t we try?

Because here’s reality: Regardless of Obama’s intentions, his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program created a list of home addresses of young people living in the United States without legal status. The Trump administration is literally holding a potential deportation list of Dreamers and their family members.

If the last 19 months are any indication, Trump could wake up in a bad mood tomorrow and again tweet that he’s rescinding DACA, in spite of pending litigation and court orders, and order that hardworking kids who have only known the United States be rounded up and sent to countries that are foreign to them. Or the courts could pave the way for him to deport them.

We have a moral imperative to act. The Koch brothers are trying – and they may be the only ones with the clout to stand between these young people and deportation. If Democrats care about Dreamers, they need to put what’s right above politics and work with the Koch brothers and congressional Republicans who are on the right side of this issue.

This is no time for people with a common interest in doing what’s right to divide and fight simply because that’s what they’ve always done. It’s time to form new alliances and act.

Heath Haussamen is NMPolitics.net’s editor and publisher. Agree with his opinion? Disagree? NMPolitics.net welcomes your views. Learn about submitting your own commentary here. This commentary has been updated to clarify the current status of DACA in the courts.