House Republicans Clash Over Immigration

Plus: GOP senators respond to Trump’s rhetoric, a Democrat wants other senators on the record on gun bills, and Blinken misses McCaul’s subpoena deadline.

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Rep. Tony Gonzales speaks on the steps of the Capitol in 2021. (Photo by Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

House Republicans knew their thin majority would make it hard to pass their agenda during this session of Congress, and a slate of immigration bills is the latest example.

Members didn’t appear any closer Monday night to reaching consensus on a slate of measures leaders had initially planned to bring to the floor earlier this year. Despite the months-long delay, GOP leaders hope they can forge a path forward in April. Republicans are expected to consider the immigration bills in a committee markup after the chamber returns from a two-week Easter recess, Rep. Chip Roy told The Dispatch Monday night.

Roy’s bill, H.R. 29, is at the center of the controversy. It would grant the homeland security secretary the power to block all undocumented immigrants from coming into the United States through any points of entry if the secretary decides it is necessary to regain “operational control” of the U.S.-Mexico border. Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas’s 23rd District has called it un-Christian and said he won’t support it. 

But on Monday night, Gonzales added that he has “a lot” of other issues with the immigration bills beyond Roy’s measure, declining to elaborate further.

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  1. Cmmonson

    In skimming the Key Hearings, it's depressing to me that I can tell if it's a Senate or House hearing just based on who they're talking to. Sigh.

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    JohnM.

    Sen. Ron Johnson--a real profile in courage. Thanks for trying to nail him down, Haley.

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  3. Tinacrevello1

    Thank you for informing the readers of the meetings that occur in government. I appreciate your concise summary of what is happening and which does not get any significant exposure.

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    PJ

    "Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas’s 23rd District has called it un-Christian and said he won’t support it."

    "un-Christian bills that aren’t going to go anywhere."

    This talk is fine for the church. If you are saying this in a secular setting and supposedly representing me we have a problem. This one of the main reasons you hear so much Christian talk out of me.

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    Richard Maxton

    “This, unfortunately, won’t be the last catastrophic mass shooting,” he said.

    --I hate this framing. There isn't a law they could pass that would END gun violence. It's just a talking point to make people on the other side look like villians.

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    Earl King

    Putting Senators on the record is a waste of time. Democrats like Murphy have a problem. We have the 2nd Amendment. He is dishonest. Universal Background checks don’t stop crazy people. We’ll find out this woman/child bought them legally. The reason? We don’t have a system to add everybody who is being treated with psychological problems is put on the Not Allowed to buy a Weapon list. Being emotionally disturbed is not a crime. Under what pretense would we be allowed to prevent them from exercising their Constitutional Rights.

    Murphy should just go ahead and say it. He wants a repeal of the 2nd Amendment. Frankly that and confiscation is the only answer to what Democrats want. Take guns away from the normies so the crazies can’t have them. Sadly all that would happen and we know this from history is that criminals would be the ones the have guns. He’d be more of honest political however if he just came out of the 2nd Amendment closet.

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    1. Horseracer

      I bet I own more guns than you do. But 30 years ago I went to a big gun show and watched really scary bad people buying "people killer guns" ...not beautiful artistic bird guns like I own. That is when I left the NRA. I have not been a member since. Because I do not believe any of those people would be accepted into a well regulated militia. The NRA made this mess. Mass killings were not the norm 50 years ago. Now they (NRA) want to say that all citizens need BIG guns, to protect themselves form the pestulance they (NRA) unleashed. I did not buy it then, I am not buying it now.

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        Earl King

        Umm....the school shootings likely have nothing to do with the NRA. We didn’t have them until the video game era. We didn’t have teens going to school and killing fellow students. Columbine was the really the first case I remember of disaffected kids going on a killing spree. I don’t remember the big shooter up video game in 1999 but I’ll bet there was one. We see mostly disturbed kids committing these crimes. There are ones that are easy to discern like the Pulse nightclub. A disaffected muslim who may have questioned his own sexuality. The crazies who shot Gabby Giffords and the theater in CO. Then we see the disturbed young men of Parkland and Uvailde. This latest one is an obviously disturbed crazy young confused women. Mental illness that results in the killing of people to my mind has zero connection to the NRA. Whatever success you can attribute to the NRA is misplaced. Basically I see a society that wants to own guns....has owned guns for a very long time. What you see as an effort to stop gun legislation I can also look at as a reaction to the threat of guns being outlawed. The most popular gun in America is the AR 15. Threaten to ban it and the rush to buy one is notable. I simply see a reaction. To the extent you want to blame successful lobbying only impacts gun legislation not the crazy people who feel compelled to shot three 9 year olds. No i see a lack of institutions that help young men and women grow up. The boy Scouts, organized sports, churches, friends and family ties. All of those are frayed in America. Or according to the new poll by the WSJ almost negligible. Society is coming apart. Video games and Social Media have been a cancer to our youth. According to Nashville PD she went to 5 stores to buy her arsenal and all were purchased in legal gun shops with background checks. Why has the AR 15 become a fascination with gun owners? Video games in my answer. There are 20 million AR 25’s in America....We have had 132 mass shootings according to report...Most don’t occur with long rifles and generally not with Ar 15’s. Pistols are the more common weapon. Yeah...I just can’t lay the blame for nutbags at the feet of the NRA....Show me a law that would have prevented this young women from killing and I’ll sign on. I just don’t believe there is one. She passed a background check. Sadly...I also don’t think legally you can keep emotionally disturbed people from their Constitutional Rights. A lawyer will likely fight you on that one.
        Are we going to confiscate 20 million AR 15’s?

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        JohnM.

        "The NRA made this mess."
        I don't think so. The degradation of culture in America made this mess.

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          Bel

          And yet other countries have similar cultural degradation and less gun violence 🤔

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          1. Rdtomasello51

            Other countries, especially European have more homogeneous and greatly smaller populations. When this country has more guns than people, 331 million, it is unfathomable to me how you contain, much less control the violence. But we have to put our collective minds together to put at least a small dent in the gun violence.(more enforcement of current laws, real teeth on universal backchecks ). Do we have even consensus on those things? In this political atmosphere, I am doubtful.

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            JohnM.

            We have more guns.

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      Scarlette Tarte

      We won't know if Republicans will never try it if there is a way to keep most firearms out of the hands of the crazies.

      The only way to know if that will work is to try it.

      Republicans could at least be honest (since honesty is what you are pushing for here, how about a little from the right?) and admit they don't care how many kids are killed because they want to own guns.

      Just admit it. And we can get to the day when finally, so many right wing kids are killed that even those parents decide, enough is enough and join with the left to overturn the second amendment.

      And it will have been a shame that we will lose that right simply because no Republican was willing to regulate guns and who can own them.

      Seeing as no right is absolute, that is within the purview of the Congress. But the right wants NO regulation and, until it's their kid who is killed, wants to own as many guns as they can.

      Honesty writ loud.

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        JohnM.

        How about enforcing laws that are already on the books first ?

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      2. DTruitt

        I don’t think many people would object to denying gun possession to bona fide crazy people, as a general proposition. But we Americans are not fools, we all know that despotic regimes routinely use faked diagnoses of psychiatric illness in normal people as an excuse to deprive them of their rights and freedoms, to suppress the opposition.

        So having a means of correctly diagnosing mental illness that cannot and will not be abused by the government and gun haters is a mission impossible. Even if one could correctly diagnose mental illness, there is a wide spectrum of maladies of varying degrees that do not necessarily help identify a mass shooter.

        It is estimated that at any given time more than 20% of Americans suffer from mental illness, and many more than that suffer at least temporary illness at some point in their lives. After all, how many people can honestly state that they’ve never been depressed? Depression can be a very serious illness if left untreated. The total population of “crazies” could be hundreds of millions … as compared to a few dozen truly crazy mass shooters a year.

        So who decides who is a crazy, and for how long? Easy, huh?

        So, as in just about everything in life, “Everything looks easy when you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

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    Rob.Kandell

    The status quo on immigration is broken. I wish both sides would shit or get off the pot and come up with real legal immigration reform. It's one thing to criticize an "asylum ban" -- I do, too -- but the status quo clearly isn't working.

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    John A Johnson

    Bully for Gonzales and for Senator Rounds

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  9. Raincheck

    Gonzales: “ We need real, tangible solutions, and I’m going to make sure that happens.”

    How did this guy get into Congress? 😃😃😃

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    1. DTruitt

      Easy - he was elected from a Hispanic majority district in Texas (the upper Rio Grande valley), of which there are several in the state, especially in south Texas. His constituents may be Republicans but they are not anti-Hispanic or anti-immigrant.

      There are numerous other Congressional Districts throughout the southern tier of states who are not for "open borders" but who will also not accept anti-immigrant bills. The GOP has to be very careful about this, because there has been an ongoing battle between the anti-immigrants and the pro-immigrants in their party for decades. States growing both in overall population as well as in Republican registrations, like Texas and Florida, are not anti-immigrant within their respective GOPs.

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        JohnM.

        Better to phrase that as 'anti-illegal immigant', I think.

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