Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto is taking a two-president swing at Washington’s immigration record, arguing that Donald Trump’s enforcement agenda has gone too far while Joe Biden’s administration failed to secure the border and protect people who had already built lives in the United States.
Speaking Wednesday at a Center for American Progress event in Washington, D.C., Cortez Masto criticized both administrations while making the case for a more practical approach, according to Nevada Current. Her remarks came just days after she reintroduced an immigration bill aimed at protecting long-settled immigrant families from deportation.
Cortez Masto Calls Trump Enforcement “Extreme And Un-American”
Cortez Masto said the Trump administration’s immigration agenda has failed, pointing to masked agents entering neighborhoods without identification, enforcement actions against peaceful protesters and detentions based on physical appearance. She argued that those tactics erode civil liberties for everyone, not just immigrants.
The senator has not called for abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but she has pushed for tighter guardrails and accountability around the agency’s operations. Her office said in July that the new legislation would protect immigrants who are victims of or witnesses to crimes and people defending civil and labor rights, according to a statement from Cortez Masto’s office.
She Also Blamed Biden For Weak Border Policy
Cortez Masto’s criticism was not limited to Trump. She said the Biden administration placed too much emphasis on newly arriving asylum seekers while putting too little emphasis on border security and overlooking undocumented immigrants who had lived in the country for decades.
She also described delays in renewing DACA protections as “horrific and unacceptable,” saying the current administration had intentionally delayed renewals, as reported by Nevada Current. The contrast is central to her argument: border enforcement and legal status, she contends, should not be treated as mutually exclusive.
What Her Fairness For Immigrant Families Act Would Do
Cortez Masto’s Fairness for Immigrant Families Act would make it easier for long-term immigrants without criminal records to seek lawful permanent residency. It would also protect DACA recipients, people with pending applications and parents of U.S. citizen children from deportation in certain circumstances, while creating new tools to crack down on fraudulent immigration services.
The proposal would reestablish the 245(i) program, which allows certain immigrants who filed qualifying applications by April 30, 2001, to adjust their status by paying a penalty fee. It would also eliminate the three-year and 10-year immigration bars that can prevent people who leave the country after living here without legal status from returning, according to the bill’s outline reported by Nevada Current.
Nevada’s Immigration Debate Has A Large Economic Footprint
The policy fight has a direct Nevada angle beyond Cortez Masto’s Senate seat. The Nevada Independent reported that undocumented immigrants in the state paid an estimated $507.1 million in state and local taxes in 2022, a figure cited from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
That economic contribution is part of the case Cortez Masto is making for legal pathways and family protections, even as she acknowledges the need for border security. The bill faces steep odds after earlier versions failed to advance, particularly with Republicans controlling the Senate and Trump still in the White House.
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