A Democrat and a Republican in Congress on the Blowback from Mass Detention

0:01Jonathan Blitzer:This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm Jonathan Blitzer, sitting in today for David Remnick. Today we're looking at the controversies over immigration in Trump's second term. The enforcement crackdown has been in the headlines almost every week. Just recently, there were two fatal shootings by ICE of unarmed people in a single week. The crackdown has been broadly unpopular. And I wanted to talk with lawmakers in both parties who are dealing with its consequences. I started with Jason Crow. He's a Democratic congressman from Colorado. His district was at the center of some of Trump's most inflammatory rhetoric during the 2024 election, the claim that the city of Aurora, Colorado, had been taken over by a Venezuelan gang.

0:48Jonathan Blitzer:Jason Crow is an Army veteran and a lawyer. He's also the Democratic Party's recruitment co-chair for the midterm elections. So he's an important voice in helping candidates figure out what to say, and particularly how to talk about an issue where Democrats have been on the back foot.

1:06Jonathan Blitzer:Talk to me about your district, because your district has sort of been ground zero for a few different plot lines. I mean, I'm thinking most recently of the recent influx of Venezuelan migrants in particular and the misinformation spread by Trump on the campaign trail.

1:23Jason Crow:Yeah, which is all BS. It is. So Aurora is the core of my district. It's about half my population, and it is one of the most diverse cities in the country. And the fact that Donald Trump would try to use it to demonize immigrants and refugees to, you know, serve as a pretext for his mass deportation and tell lies about this gang takeover, which never happened. We, like many communities, have had criminal gang issues, but the vast majority of it are domestic gangs, not transnational gangs. And it's being dealt with. It is being dealt with by local law enforcement. It has been. But, you know, in so many instances, it's not based on the reality.

2:05Jason Crow:It's the opposite of the reality in our case. So we pushed back very, very hard. And those local elected officials who actually joined with Trump to perpetuate that narrative all got beat in the election because our community is like enough is enough. We're not going to sit here and take that.

2:25Jonathan Blitzer:Why are Democrats seen as not being the party with answers on immigration?

2:31Jason Crow:Well, Democrats did have a chance to do bigger things than immigration, and we didn't. And what is clear is that we weren't able to hold conflicting views or what might seem like conflicting views, but they're really not at the same time. Right. We should be able to say that it's important that we have secure borders. Right. The vast majority of Americans agree with that. Why can't we say that? Right. And at the same time, as we must also be able to say, we are going to enforce the laws against violent criminals. Right. If there are violent immigrant criminal organizations, we will go after those.

3:09Jason Crow:But that is a very small portion, obviously. The vast majority of violent crime in America is domestic-related violent crime. But we have to be able to say those things to have credibility to then take the next step and say we want a system based on dignity and humanity. And we want a pathway to citizenship for people that are here living, working, following the rules who want to be and will be great Americans. Right. But you have to take that first step to have the credibility to take the next steps.

3:38Jonathan Blitzer:And did you feel like during, say, the Biden years, the party didn't take that first step to a sufficient degree?

3:44Jason Crow:I absolutely feel that. Absolutely. In the Biden campaign, and don't get me wrong, I'm a proud Democrat and I supported the president's campaign, but they were going to come and do an event in Colorado. And the request was, don't talk about immigration. We're not going to talk about the immigration issue. I said, what do you mean we're not going to talk about the immigration issue? It's the single biggest issue in my community. We just had 30 ,000 Venezuelan immigrants surge into Colorado, the largest number, more than Philadelphia and L.A. combined. This is the thing that we're talking about.

4:18Jason Crow:Everybody's worried about. So I am not going to sit up there and give credence to a campaign and legitimacy to it if you're not going to talk about an issue that everybody needs to talk about. I'm just not going to stick my head in the sand on it. What was their response? Well, I ended up not doing the event. Wow. Right. I'm not going to be a part of something that I didn't think had legitimacy. So there was a sense that if we don't talk about it, if we ignore it, it'll go away, which never works in politics. Right. And never works in governing either. So we basically gave the issue to Donald Trump.

4:53Jason Crow:And then we see the consequences of that, the inhumanity, the brutality and the violence of his immigration crackdown. And, you know, that is in some part a consequence of us ceding ground on the issue.

5:09Jonathan Blitzer:Your role, I mean, among the many things that you do in Congress, you're helping Dems across the country kind of message this issue. I want to hear from you how you're thinking through the messaging element of this.

5:22Jason Crow:I'm not somebody that believes that you need to choose a lane and just focus on one lane on immigration. Like some people will say you just have to talk about it through an economic lens. Others will say a morality lens or some combination. I think you can do both. I think we have to do both. And because the cruel inhumanity of this administration is going to increase, right, they're going to do the mass deportation. They're going to continue it. There's been no relenting and no pullback on Stephen Miller's grand vision for mass deportations in America. It's going to happen. And what's going to result from that is people are going to see the extent to which immigrants and refugees are integrated into American society.

6:06Jason Crow:They're going to see vast swaths of our workforce disappear. They're going to see our businesses shutter. They're going to see our economy contract. They're going to see their friends and neighbors and co-workers disappear from their lives. The children that go to school with our children will someday stop showing up. These are all horrible things. So there is a morality and humanity argument as well as an economic one. And we should also be making the economic one. Now, we have a housing crisis, right? We're 200 ,000 housing units short in Colorado, much like much of the country. And close to half of our workforce is disappearing or at risk of deportation in one way or another under the Stephen Miller plan.

6:48Jason Crow:What is that going to do to the housing crisis as well as any other service industry in the state? So that's just one example, and every state has examples like it. And you talk to Americans, and they don't disagree with a lot of Democratic Party platform items. But what they do say is that Democrats lack confidence of their convictions. They don't have confidence. They seem weak and timid. So go in there, dammit, and own your issue.

7:15Jonathan Blitzer:Congressman, thanks so much for your time.

7:16Jason Crow:Thank you.

7:22Jonathan Blitzer:That's Jason Crow, a Democratic representative from Colorado. We'll continue in just a moment.

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11:19Jonathan Blitzer:A new State Department report blames Cuba for fomenting an anti-American left. Meanwhile, the GOP is pushing the C word hard. The barbarians are in the gate. Look, 35 years ago, Republicans and Democrats in Congress were fighting communism on a distant shore. Now it's here. Why communism and why now on this week's On the Media from WNYC. Find On the Media wherever you get your podcasts.

12:13But our constituents, many of whom voted for Trump, are outraged at how ICE has been operating in their streets.

12:22Jonathan Blitzer:You're a Cuban-American who's generally supportive of the president, but you've broken with him on his signature issue, let's say, immigration. Sure, indeed. Where do you think the president has gone too far or has made kind of fundamental mistakes? Lay out for me where you think the administration has erred in this issue. I think the administration, first of all, enforcement last year in 2025, enforcement went to a place where it did not need to go. Because when the president promised that he was going to deport the bad hombres, we all clapped. Enforcement should have been concentrated on those people who have criminal records and there are illegals or undocumented in this country.

13:08Not the ones who do not have a criminal record, who did not come in during the Biden years, who have set roots in this country, may have American children, are contributing to five key industries in the country. In other words, they're giving and they're making us stronger as an economy. I think that that enforcement part was misguided and has caused the Hispanics to flee and not consider the GOP their home anymore, which happened in 2024, as you know. So 55 percent of male Hispanics voted for the president for the first time in history because, unfortunately, you know, that we had not spoken to them before.

13:56The president did speak, attracted them. They like Trump. And now because of the enforcement policies, that has crumbled.

14:06Jonathan Blitzer:I know, for example, you know, when you look at the statistics from 2025, ice arrests in the Miami area are among the highest in the country. The vast majority of people who are being arrested do not have criminal records. And so you've said that the president or the administration needs to, and these are your words, course correct. Are you seeing signs of that? Are you seeing any indication that the administration is paying attention? But not to the degree of what we need, because I go back, you know, the dignity legislation, which is the my signature legislation, addresses those issues. When you look at 80 percent of Americans, they want some type of immigration reform, immigration, fix this immigration period.

14:49And how can you fix it? Well, I think that the dignity provides a wonderful opportunity is very much in the middle.

14:56Jonathan Blitzer:She's talking about a piece of legislation called the Dignity Act, the only major immigration bill before Congress right now. Salazar first introduced it in 2023, along with a Democratic co-sponsor, Veronica Escobar of Texas. The bill has since gone through some changes. When it was originally introduced, the Dignity Act offered a path to citizenship for people who were undocumented. Salazar later removed that path to citizenship. But for now, the bill still doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Washington is not understanding it. The GOP is not really understanding, does not have the foresight, the understanding.

15:33There is a disconnect within my own party. And I think dignity, after five years of thinking about it and making it better, evolving this legislation, we have a perfect vehicle for the president to embrace.

15:50Jonathan Blitzer:What is your sense right now of the biggest roadblocks to the Dignity Act? I mean, the White House has to be one of them. Lack of understanding, lack of foresight, lack of not understanding that the Republican Party needs what you call the swing voting block of the Hispanics, which is the largest minority at this hour and is the fastest minority growing in the country. If you want to win elections because elections have consequences, you need to have votes. You've said you've written that addressing the president. You've said you could be for immigration. What Lincoln was for slavery and Reagan was for communism.

16:33Jonathan Blitzer:I guess the general question I have is. Tell me. It's unmistakable that, you know, the president. I mean, look, he's he's endorsed your reelection bid and so on. So there's been support. And he treats me really well. And I told him the other day, hey, sir, are you you're not mad at me. You're not. OK, come then. Come give me a guess. And he did. But then we pan out a bit and I look at the kind of sum total of the actions taken by the White House. I mean, we just got a ruling from the Supreme Court on birthright citizenship, which the Trump administration has tried to end. I mean, these are foundational assaults on even the most basic understanding of who belongs here.

17:11Jonathan Blitzer:That doesn't fly in the face of the legislation you're trying to move through Congress? Listen, you know how politics works? That one day is white and the next day is black and vice versa. So I have all the hope in the world that before the president is out of the White House, he will be the one signing this bill because he's a smart guy and he gets that he could be for immigration when Lincoln was for slavery. I'm sure that Lincoln had a pretty tough time convincing the Union or the North to side with the South. You know, I'm sure that it was not easy for Lincoln, but I do think that this is going to hit the White House and is going to be suddenly like the Bible says, you know, things happen with President Trump suddenly.

17:56And and he will get it because he is a business guy. And not only that, he is. Construction and hospitality. What does that tell you? Those two need a lot of hands. And most of those hands come from the immigrant community.

18:14Jonathan Blitzer:I mean, what kind of things are you hearing? I mean, from the start of the president's second term to now, what sorts of things are you hearing on the local level from constituents? The Republicans who voted for Trump, the independents who voted for Salazar and for Trump are saying we did not vote for this. We do not want those who do not have a criminal record and are contributing to construction, hospitality, agricultural manufacturing or health care to be taken out. Because the reality here is that it's true that those people broke the law. Of course they did. But someone let them stay for 20 years.