Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.
Recommended Videos
WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-San Antonio, warned that indiscriminate mass deportations under a new Trump administration would be unfeasible and damaging to the Republican Party.
“If the message is, ‘We’re here to deport your abuelita,’ that’s not going to work well,” Gonzales said Sunday on ABC News. “It has to be one of holding these hardened criminals accountable.”
But Gonzales’ stance got pushback from the right wing of the party. U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, a hardliner who has led policy for the House Freedom Caucus, asserted that all immigrants in the country who entered illegally must be deported. Roy has also called for closing the country to legal immigration until undocumented immigrants are deported.
“Our starting place [for deportation] should be for any individuals who came here illegally or were released into the U.S. illegally, illegitimately, by the Harris-Biden-Mayorkas regime,” Roy said Monday. “They need to be removed. They need to be deported. That is the starting place."
“Congress is going to have to support [Trump] and I frankly don’t want to hear excuses out of my Republican colleagues,” Roy added in a Fox Business interview on Monday.
President-elect Donald Trump is vowing mass deportations of undocumented immigrants as soon as he enters the White House, potentially impacting over 11 million people in the country and over 1.7 million people in Texas. Democrats and immigrants rights activists have denounced the agenda as inhumane and impossible to realistically execute.
Gonzales asserted that the number of undocumented convicted criminals is already in the hundreds of thousands and deporting them would already be a considerable logistical challenge.
Other Republicans, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, said the incoming Trump administration should focus on “the dangerous persons that we know are here.”
“Begin there and then see how it transpires,” Johnson said Monday on CNN.
The nation’s undocumented population includes tax-paying residents who have lived in the country for years as well as recent arrivals who are waiting for their asylum claims to make their way through the nation’s backlogged immigration courts. Over 1.7 million of them live in Texas, according to the Migration Policy Institute, the second highest number behind California.
Trump is already moving ahead on his agenda of mass deportations. Stephen Miller, an architect of the previous Trump administration’s border and immigration policy, will return as a top aide in the new Trump White House. Trump also named Tom Homan, a hardline former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to be his “border czar” last week. Homan has advocated the removal of all undocumented immigrants and defended the most controversial aspects of the previous Trump administration’s border policy, including the separation of parents from their children.
“I got a message to the millions of illegal aliens that Joe Biden has released into our country in violation of federal law: You better start packing now,” Homan said during the Republican National Convention this summer.
The Trump transition team is also planning out the mechanics for mass deportations, including expanding detention facilities and executive action reversing protections for migrants from prosecution rolled out by the Biden administration, CNN reported Monday.
Democrats and immigrants rights groups have expressed horror at the proposals. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit Monday for more information on the Trump team’s deportation plans. U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso, warned that legal U.S. residents and citizens could get mixed up in mass deportation schemes.
“It is going to be very important for every family that is a mixed status family, or an undocumented family, or even a family that has legal permanent residence, you have to have a plan,” Escobar said. “You need to connect with advocates and lawyers.”
Congress has failed to pass substantive border or immigration policy for decades, with successive presidential administrations filling the gaps with executive orders. House Republicans passed a hardline border security bill last year shaped by Texas Republicans. The Secure the Border Act would increase penalties for overstaying visas, require migrants to stay in Mexico as they seek asylum and prevent migrants from seeking asylum outside of ports of entry. The bill went nowhere in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
Roy was a major architect of the legislation. Months prior, he introduced his own bill that would effectively shut down the border and detain asylum seekers. He and Gonzales openly feuded over the bill, which Gonzales said would end asylum. Gonzales called Roy’s legislation un-American and un-Christian, labels that angered Roy.
Even with the Secure the Border Act passed, Roy and Gonzales continued to have frosty relations into the elections, with Gonzales denouncing Roy’s far-right wing of the party as “scumbags” and Klansmen for voting against foreign aid for U.S. allies. Shortly afterward, Roy endorsed Gonzales’ primary challenger, Brandon Herrera, whom Gonzales defeated in a primary runoff in May.