Ruben Gallego gets worked up when he talks about his party’s immigration platform. Democrats, he says, have been too “afraid” of taking a more assertive approach to the border—and, in so doing, opened the door for Donald Trump to move on his draconian, unconstitutional agenda. “It just drives me nuts,” he told me.
This week, the Arizona senator released his own plan to improve the nation’s immigration system—one the Arizona Democrat says would strengthen border security, while also protecting immigrant rights, ensuring pathways to citizenship, and establishing more avenues to come to the United States legally. “We don’t have to choose between border security and immigration reform,” he said, announcing his proposal Monday. “We can and should do both.”
In an interview, which has been lightly edited for clarity and length, the swing-state senator discussed his border plan, criticized Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship, and explained the lessons he wants his party to take from the successful 2024 campaign he ran in an otherwise dismal year for the Democrats: “Denying reality does not change reality,” Gallego told me. “You can be a very good Democrat and be for strong border security.”
Vanity Fair: The Supreme Court recently heard arguments related to Trump’s effort to restrict birthright citizenship. Trump beforehand said that allowing birthright citizenship makes the US a “stupid country.” What do you make of all that?
Senator Ruben Gallego: You know, in my campaign, where I won some of the same voters that Donald Trump won, I traveled the whole state, and not one person ever asked me to end birthright citizenship. Number one, the Constitution protects it. Number two, it really is what makes this country great. The fact that people who are born here are US citizens is what makes us that melting pot, right? You see other countries that don’t have birthright citizenship, you have problems with assimilation there. We don’t, I think, because this country automatically loves these kids—and these kids, in return, automatically love the country. If you break that and you start creating second-class citizens, you’re going to have bigger problems in the future that don’t exist right now.
Trump won in November, proposing this hardline approach we’ve seen. What do you think your party has been missing on immigration and the border, and how do you think your proposal addresses them?
The proposal is really what I heard on the campaign trail. Look, the voters who cared about immigration in Arizona? We won their vote. We were more trusted than Kari Lake on the border.
There were voters who went into the voting booth saying, I trust Trump, and I trust Ruben Gallego on border issues. And the reason we are still losing—and I say the royal we—to Trump is because we’re just saying what we’re against and not what we’re for. And we need to make it very clear that we are for border security. That’s what this plan talks about. We are for stopping the abuse of the asylum system. That’s what this plan is about. We’re about getting people out of the shadows. And we recognize we can’t make all 12 million people legal US citizens—but we do recognize that Americans understand the special place in their hearts for Dreamers, and for the spouses of US citizens. They should have a pathway, and everyone else should at least be able to stay in this country without fear of deportation if they haven’t done any serious crimes. And so the fact that Democrats can’t even start with a point A and saying like, Yes, having a secure border is good and we should continue to figure out how to do that, and then you can move on to talk about point B—I think that’s what makes it very hard for a lot of people to take us seriously on the overall conversation of immigration reform.
