A Conversation with Massachusetts Congressman Jake Auchincloss

Part one of a three part series

You’re office reached out to me, and obviously, I lean pretty far right, so what was the appeal about having me ask you some questions?

I represent 800 thousand people, some of them voted for Trump, some of them voted for Biden, some of them didn’t vote but I represent all of them and when I look at the biggest city in my district, Fall River, they voted for a Republican for the first time in a century.

What do you think about that? Why do you think that happened?

I think cost of living and border security were driving factors. That has become the standard answer but just because that is the standard answer doesn’t mean it’s the right one. Over all, if you look at incumbent parties, not just in the United States, but everywhere in the developed world- Great Brittan, France, Italy, Japan, here, whether they were center-right or center-left, they all lost vote share in the most recent post-COVID election. Obviously, the politics of every country have a slightly different flavor but overarching trends were post-COVID spikes in cost of living and concerns about migration.

You mentioned, just a minute ago, that those standard reasons of cost of living and border security, weren’t maybe the right reason. Do you think that voters were misinformed about border security and that lent to a different style of voting this past election?

No, I’m saying that it’s become the standard answer, those two issues- cost of living and border security- are clearly issues that explain why cities like Fall River went from Democrat to Republican in this Presidential election and I do think, if you look at the numbers over the past four years, 8 million people crossed the southern border. 3 million with documentation, 5 million without. That’s not an acceptable state of affairs at the southern border. You can’t have 5 million people enter without documentation.

Now, we can point out that by the end of the Biden administration, actually border crossings had dropped below what they were compared to the end of the Trump administration but the point remains that a huge number of people crossed the border.

What’s interesting about this, there is cost of living and there’s migration. Those are the two major issues, and to some extent, they moved in opposite directions. What I mean by that is having 8 million people cross the border, 5 million without documentation, is deeply unpopular and I think with some degree of justification, but it was also deflationary. Post-COVID services got really expensive: home construction, home care, hospitality and tourism. The migrant workforce, having high labor participation from the migrant workforce, say meat packing, seasonal farm work, helped put downward pressure on prices and there are a number of Federal Reserve studies that have demonstrated that. So they’re moving in opposite directions. It’s like we need immigration because we’ve got a growing economy and an aging population but it’s got to be done in a lawful, orderly way and in a way that feels fair to people. This didn’t feel fair to people.

Every day it seems there’s a different news story coming out about the cost associated with the migrants in Massachusetts and I think it (migration) just doesn’t feel the same way as it has in the past.

I think I have been pretty consistent on this. To the extent that ICE is coming and they want to deport criminals, or they want to deport individuals who applied for asylum, had due process for an asylum screening and failed that asylum screening, that’s well within Federal law and they should be doing so. They are welcome to come to the jails and clean out the jails for the people who have had due process. I’m not going to support indiscriminate roundups or targeting schools. I don’t think that’s who we are in the Bay State and I’m also not going to support the use of the military to do domestic law enforcement.

Well, let me pause you there for a second. Do you think that’s going to happen, to the level of going to schools? Massachusetts schools are actively putting out information and training their staff. Do you really think we’re going to see ICE heading over to schools and taking kids out of their classrooms?

I have not seen it yet but the reason I’m saying it is because the President has indicated and they’ve signed an executive order that removes those parameters. Previously under the Biden Administration, churches and schools were considered sanctuary sites that were not permissible and that scope has now widened. You’re right that it has not happened yet, to my knowledge and maybe I’m missing something, but if it did, it’s something to be on guard for.

The philosophy of posse commitatis is the military can’t be used for domestic law enforcement and I think that should be a bipartisan value. That’s a fifteen hundred year-old principle that has some really good precedent behind it. We do not want the military engaged in American civil liberties. There’s a reason we have the 3rd amendment about not quartering troops in your home. They can use basis for ancillary purposes related to deportation. For example, the opening of Guantanamo Bay, for deporting criminals. That’s an appropriate ancillary use but they can not have actual military service members doing door to door raids. That’s something where I want to see respect for the law, there but to the extent of deporting criminals? Get the worst out.

ICE coming in now that the Trump Administration has come into office is kind of long overdue. Why do you think ICE wasn’t actively pursuing the criminals that were known here in this state as these migrants were being shipped here? We didn’t see any activity of rounding up individuals who met that criteria but they were obviously here. Why didn’t we see this before now?

Well, that’s not totally accurate. For example, the analysis that I had seen is that on a given day at the end of the Biden Administration’s term, they were doing about 300 deportations a day, perhaps 300 hundred arrests per day, we’ll get you the exact number. It was about 300 or so in Trump’s first week in office as well. Now, they invited along Fox News cameras so it was a signal of deterrence and the Biden administration didn’t do that. I think that the difference is that maybe not as marked in substance as Trump would have you to believe. It’s just more Trump theatrical performance behind it.

Well, I mean, theatrics on both sides, to that respect. We just had Senator Ed Markey host a big seminar online with his post-inauguration statements and he had organizations like MIRA represented talking about their plans going forward to protect people from potential deportations and training schools to protect students. I guess the optics of it are that deportations were not happening before, even though it should have been. Only now as a result of what Trump is doing, others are trying to put their own theatrics in place.

No doubt Trump understands optics. Listen, you point about left and right, in the past, using immigration as a way to galvanize their base is undoubtedly true, which is why I’m on the most comprehensive bi-partisan immigration bill in Congress. It’s called The Dignity Act. It was hammered out by two Latino women in Congress, one Democrat and one Republican from Florida and Texas and it’s an example of how Americans want Congress to work. You take this issue, with different factors in it, and you hammer it out point by point and you try to do it holistically. For example, more funding for border security and border infrastructure, address root causes of migration in Central America. There’s 60 million people who live on a $1.00 a day or less south of the US-Mexico border. You can’t build a wall tall enough to prevent 60 million people seeking a one hundred times wage increase, right?

I don’t want to interrupt you, but I just want to be honest and I want to take this and strip that down a little bit. It is really hard right now financially for families here, myself included. I only feel compelled to be compassionate or financially assist people less fortunate when I have expendable income, when I’m financially stable, when my friends and family are comfortable. I don’t feel that way right now so it’s hard for me to even start talking about ‘south of the border’ when there is an issue here at home.

My point is not about compassion. My point is about understanding the root causes. You gotta tackle these issues in Central America or else the flow is going to come, which is why this bill is important. It’s example of both Democrats and Republicans tamping down the sensationalism and actually looking at the substance of policy. I’m one of the few Democrats on that bill because it’s example of what I think my constituents here in Massachusetts want. Yes, we want lawful and orderly migration but we have to have a system for it and it has to be fair.

Speaking about fair immigration, it sounds to me like that is one of the reasons why you voted against the Laken Riley Act. I reached out to all my X followers and asked them what they wanted me to ask you and it was the number one response.

Yeah, I saw that, it was a big one.

I’ve heard your statements on why you voted against this bill. Can you add anything to it that we haven’t already heard you talk about yet? This is a very passionate point of contention for a lot of people. You’re getting a lot of heat from it and there’s a lot of hate towards you for not voting ‘yes’ for this.

First I would say I’m very confident I have the support of my district for that vote. Let’s go through it from first principles. The murder of Laken Riley is a horrific tragedy and if I thought there was legislation that I thought could prevent future such tragedies, I would and will be on them. This Dignity Act is and example of the kind of legislation that would do that. So, by the way, was the bipartisan voter security legislation from last Congress that Trump torpedoed but I vocally supported it and wanted to vote for it before the Senate killed it. So we have to prevent future murders. The bill named in her honor would not do that and it would not do that, first of all, because it’s redundant. It is already a deportable offense to shoplift or other crimes.

Second of all, the core value I think both parties share is freedom and freedom fundamentally means, to me as an American, freedom from undue power whether that’s corporate power or government power. One of the bulwarks of that freedom is that if you are accused of something, you get to tell your side of the story, with an impartial jury, a judge, with witnesses and with facts. You get your day in court against even the biggest players. This bill (the Laken Riley Act) deprives people of that freedom. The President gets that freedom, immigrants get that freedom. In this country, we believe everyone gets that freedom.

Lastly, and this is something Republicans are not paying attention to and they are going to rue the day, this bill gives standing to every single Attorney General throughout the country to sue the administration any time they disagree on an immigration policy. Now, this bill was originated during the Biden Administration and Republicans thought that was a great idea at the time, they thought there was going to be a lot of helpful litigation. They’re not going to like it now that Trump is President and I don’t know what they were thinking putting this forward.

Why do you think some of your Democrat partners voted for this, knowing that? You said Republicans will ‘rue the day’. Won’t Democrats who voted for this as well?

Well there may be Democrats who want their state Attorney Generals to challenge the Trump Administration. I’m not going to speak to the ones who voted for it, I think it’s a bad law, but what I will say is that I don’t think the Republicans updated their view of this bill to account for the fact that there is a new administration now. If people want to see this immigrations system that we have get even more dysfunctional than it already it is, which is hard to imagine, just wait until every Attorney General, every ambitious Democrat or ambitious Republican who wants to make a name for themselves can sue without standing. There’s going to be non-stop injunctions every time Trump does anything. This bill is a recipe for dysfunction to make our immigration system worse than we have right now. It was really, poorly drafted legislation and I look at policy first.

This is the first in a three part series of an interview with Massachusetts Congressman Jake Auchincloss.

Photo credit: Erin Raffa