Immigration Shaping Up As Hot Topic In Warren-Deaton Massachusetts Senate Race

By Sam Drysdale

Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Thursday stood by her vote last spring against a border security and immigration reform deal, a topic likely to play out further during her campaign against Republican John Deaton for a third term in the Senate.

Warren voted against a bipartisan immigration reform bill in March, joining with other progressive Democrats and Republicans in rejecting the bill. A similar bill was also brought forward for an unsuccessful vote in May, and though Warren did not vote because she was attending her granddaughter’s graduation, a spokesperson for her office said the senator’s “views on this bill have not changed.”

Beacon Hill’s Democratic leadership supported the immigration bill, which would have marked the first comprehensive set of changes in decades, given the president more power to stop unlawful entrances into the country, and overhauled the asylum process.

Warren told reporters after an unrelated event on Thursday that she voted against the bill in March with the knowledge that her vote would not kill the bill, since Republicans had already had the votes to stop it.

“Two days before the vote was to come up in the Senate, when it would have passed overwhelmingly, Donald Trump said no, all the Republicans should vote against it so that he could maintain the issue of chaos at the border. And that’s exactly what happened,” she said.

She continued, “The Republicans did what Donald Trump wanted them to do in the hopes that there would be more trouble at the border, because this is Donald Trump putting Donald Trump ahead of the interests of the United States of America. At the time I voted on that bill, it was dead.”

Deaton, who won the Republican primary on Tuesday to challenge Warren in November’s general election, has said he would have voted in favor of the bill, as a first step towards addressing the migrant crisis.

“Twelve million people have crossed when you count getaways. So even if you assume 99 percent are good people who just want a better life, something I can identify with, even if 1 percent is bad, that’s 120,000 people. It’s a national security crisis. So I would have voted for that bill because it stopped the bleeding,” Deaton said during a debate with his primary opponents on WBZ last month.

Deaton said it wasn’t a “perfect bill” but that what made him stand out as a candidate is he’s willing “to do something about” immigration.

A spring GBH News/CommonWealth Beacon poll conducted by MassINC Polling Group found that immigration was a “major problem” or “crisis” in Massachusetts. At the time of the polling, emergency family shelters were at capacity, strained by incoming low-income migrant families, and Gov. Maura Healey’s administration had begun tightening policies around providing shelter. These issues have continued, and in some areas escalated, in the time since.

“The immigration issue here in Massachusetts is taxing our infrastructure, our hotels, our urgent cares, our schools. We have to do something about it,” Deaton said during the August debate, criticizing his Republican primary opponents who he said “shared the same position as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and that is to do nothing and to not vote for it.”

Warren on Thursday said she is looking to negotiations on new immigration policy going forward, rather than backwards at the failed deal, which she said had a number of issues.

“The bill had parts that were a good first start, and that is money to do more security at the border and to take care of our immigration courts and fund them more fully. It also needed a part where we could get more money to the states. What was in that bill was completely inadequate, and it needed a pathway to citizenship for our Dreamers, for the people who were essential workers during the pandemic, for people who are here and want to serve in our military,” Warren said.

Before the Senate vote in May, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) highlighted support for the bill from both major parties. President Joe Biden at the time said it was 

“We all know the situation at the border’s unacceptable and demands attention from Congress,” Schumer said at the time. “Poll after poll show that a large majority of Americans across party lines support our position of getting a bipartisan bill done, and only 8 percent are in opposition … People want to get things done. People want us to come together.”