Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds introduced the special guest at her annual Harvest Festival fundraiser in early October.
“Let’s give a warm Iowa welcome to a really good friend, an outstanding governor of Texas, Greg Abbott,” she said.
Abbott came on stage as Reynolds’ supporters applauded and country music played over the loudspeakers.
Reynolds said she invited Abbott to give a “real, raw account” of what she called the mess at the southern border. Abbott described his efforts to curb illegal border crossings into Texas.
“It’s no exaggeration to say that the future of the United States of America, on this one issue alone, is in peril,” Abbott said.
Every community is a border community right now.Rep. Ashley Hinson
While Reynolds isn’t up for reelection this year, she used her fundraiser to highlight immigration policy as a reason for voters to support Republican candidates for president and congress. She said the Democratic Biden administration’s policies aren’t just a problem for states that border Mexico. Reynolds cited statistics from the Iowa Department of Public Safety.
“In fact, when you compare 2020 seizures of fentanyl-laced counterfeit painkillers, they are up by more than 2,400% so far this year,” she said. “Because every single state is a border state.”
That’s a refrain echoed by Republicans running for Congress like 3rd District Rep. Zach Nunn and 2nd District Rep. Ashley Hinson.
“Every county now has sadly become a border county,” Nunn said at the state fair.
“Every community is a border community right now,” Hinson said during a debate on Iowa PBS.
Immigration and border security have become central issues in this year’s election with the Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll showing that 60% of likely Iowa voters say it’s critical to secure the U.S.-Mexico border. Iowa Republicans and Democrats running for Congress say they want to crack down on illegal border crossings and work to stop fentanyl from getting into the country, but they talk about the issues in very different ways.
In campaign speeches and TV ads, Iowa Republicans running for reelection to the U.S. House of Representatives have cast unauthorized immigrants as dangerous, and they’ve called for cracking down on illegal border crossings as a way to reduce violent crime and deadly fentanyl overdoses. They have claimed that the country has an “open border.”
“Eight million illegals coming into our country is a direct threat to our nation,” Nunn said at the state fair this summer. “In fact, I think there’s no more clear, direct threat to our country.”
Republicans’ statements on immigration often misrepresent the situation.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has reported more than 8 million encounters at the southern border during the Biden administration. The number includes people who were quickly kicked out of the country.
Illegal border crossings spiked to a record high last December, and they have sharply declined over the past few months. Reduced crossings have been attributed to President Joe Biden’s new asylum restrictions and Mexico’s increased border enforcement.
While some people who crossed the southern border without authorization have committed violent crimes, studies have found immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than people born in the U.S.
Fentanyl has been driving nationwide increases in overdose deaths for about the past decade, but opioid overdose deaths declined in most states in the second half of last year. According to federal data, most fentanyl comes across the southern border, mainly brought through legal ports of entry in vehicles driven by U.S. citizens.
Democrats focus on failed bipartisan border security plan
Democrats running for Congress in Iowa have also tapped into voters’ concerns about the border, increasingly talking about it in campaign ads and speeches. But they focus less on crime and danger, and more on what they say is their Republican opponents’ failure to act.
Christina Bohannan, the Democrat running in Iowa’s 1st Congressional District, said Biden should have acted sooner to reduce illegal border crossings. She said Republicans in Congress had an opportunity to support a bipartisan border security plan that was negotiated in the Senate and endorsed by the Border Patrol union.
They wanted to keep using it as a campaign issue. If that is not the best example of putting party over country, I don't know what is.Democrat Christina Bohannan
“But rather than do anything about it, Rep. Miller-Meeks and House Republicans wanted to keep playing politics with it,” Bohannan said. “They wanted to keep using it as a campaign issue. If that is not the best example of putting party over country, I don't know what is.”
Three of the four Democrats running for Congress in Iowa — Bohannan, 2nd District candidate Sarah Corkery and 3rd District candidate Lanon Baccam — said they would vote for this bipartisan plan. Fourth District candidate Ryan Melton said on Iowa PBS that he probably would have voted for it.
During a debate on KCCI-TV, Baccam emphasized that the plan would have provided more border patrol agents and sent technology to the border to identify drugs like fentanyl. He said it also would have forced the president to close the border to most asylum seekers under certain conditions.
“We could’ve had that. And it could’ve been in effect at this point,” Baccam said “We could’ve had more technology at our borders already.”
He also accused Nunn of failing to act. Nunn and 1st District Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks never had a chance to vote on the bipartisan bill because former President Donald Trump pressured GOP lawmakers to kill it, and it never got advanced by the Senate.
Iowa’s Republican members of Congress voted for a separate border security bill, but it lacked bipartisan support and never had a chance to pass in the Senate.
Republicans have accused Democratic candidates of being late to address voters’ concerns.
“The border has been out of control for, now, almost four years,” Miller-Meeks said during a debate on Iowa PBS. “My opponent didn’t mention the border, didn’t say anything about the border, didn’t say the border should be secure until it became a political liability for her and her party.”
Where both parties agree
Despite all of the political attacks around immigration, Republicans and Democrats are now endorsing some very similar policies.
The bipartisan plan endorsed by Iowa Democrats running for Congress would have effectively ended the policy of allowing asylum seekers to live in the U.S. while waiting for an asylum decision, which can take years in the backlogged immigration court system. Republican candidates have long called for ending that policy.
Candidates from both parties say they want more law enforcement resources at the border.
Republicans, however, have also called for building more sections of border wall, making asylum seekers stay in Mexico while waiting for immigration hearings and for stepping up efforts to deport people with criminal convictions.
These campaign conversations in Iowa have been almost fully focused on border security. Some candidates mention possible changes to legal immigration pathways as somewhat of an afterthought.
A Midwest Newsroom survey conducted by Emerson College Polling found 42% of Iowa registered voters said they think immigration has had a negative impact on Iowa, 32% said it has had a positive impact on the state and 26% said they were unsure.
Advocates call to 'elevate the voices' of immigrants
Advocates for immigrants and refugees say the voices and humanity of immigrants are being lost in campaign talking points.
Ruxandra Marcu, director of programs for Refugee and Immigrant Voices in Action, said solutions are being proposed by people who don’t have the experience of being an immigrant or refugee.
“Just like with any issue, when we just have outsiders making decisions, there are so many gaps in knowledge and experience,” Marcu said. “It would be great to elevate the voices of those who have gone through the migration process.”
Marcu said immigrant communities are making positive contributions to Iowa with their work — especially in health care and agriculture — and with their culture, music and food. Some smaller towns in Iowa have avoided the decline seen in other rural areas because of growing immigrant communities.
Jaymes Flores with RIVA AmeriCorps said immigrants and people born in Iowa have more similarities than differences.
“They have a resiliency, they are hardworking, they are family-oriented,” he said. “If you just take the word ‘refugee’ and ‘immigrant’ out, and put ‘Iowan’ in, it’s the same group of folks.”
After the election, it will remain to be seen if Democrats and Republicans in Congress can agree on meaningful changes to immigration policies. The last time they did was more than two decades ago.
