Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) has faced significant backlash after admitting Wednesday that illegal immigrants are the people that Democrats “care about most.”
During a Wednesday interview on MSNBC’s “All In with Chris Hayes,” Hayes questioned Murphy regarding the Senate’s failure to pass the proposed bipartisan border security bill. Murphy explained that instead of following the party’s previous playbook of pushing for illegal immigrants to have a pathway for citizenship during the negotiation of border legislation, Democrat lawmakers had pushed for additional funding for Ukraine.
“Well, I mean, Chris, that’s been a failed play for 20 years, Murphy said regarding the previous strategy of Democrat lawmakers. “So you are right that that has been the Democratic strategy for 30 years, maybe, and it has failed to deliver for the people we care about most, the undocumented Americans that are in this country.”
Murphy told Hayes that the failed border bill had “really important things for migrant rights,” such as the largest visa expansion in three decades, additional work permits, and a right to representation. The Connecticut senator claimed that while the legislation would not have been a “pathway to citizenship,” the bill offered “something substantial for people that actually care about migrants.”
According to Fox News, the Democrat senator’s comments during Wednesday’s interview quickly went viral, with many Americans suggesting that Murphy’s statement was an acknowledgment of the Democratic Party’s true priority regarding illegal immigration.
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“This is what they call giving away the entire game,” Stephen Miller, a former Trump advisor and immigration expert, said in a statement on social media. “This is why Democrats angrily oppose every enforcement measure. This is why Democrats bitterly oppose detention and deportation. This is why Joe Biden and the Democrats eradicated the border and orchestrated the invasion.”
Derek Hunter, a columnist with Townhall, shared a video of the interview on social media, warning that Americans should “believe” Democrats when they “tell you who they are.”
Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, suggested that Murphy’s comments “explain the problems with the Senate bill.” She argued that the border legislation was not intended to provide border security but was meant to “codify the disastrous catch and release policies of the last three years.”
Vaughan told Fox News, “It’s stunning to hear a United States senator declare that his top priority is to accommodate people from other countries who broke our laws to get here, not to give relief to the citizens in his state who are forced to underwrite all of the costs associated with the border crisis that was instigated by Joe Biden.”
