Rep. Ruben Gallego sees 'crisis' as border crossings surge. GOP says he's playing politics

Rep. Ruben Gallego lashed out at the Trump White House in 2018 as it considered sending armed troops to the southern border.

“I will gladly work with the president when his ideas aren’t stupid and detrimental to the United States,” Gallego, D-Ariz., said at the time in an interview on CNN. “Unfortunately, this is what this plan is.”

Last month, after federal emergency authorities rebuffed Gallego on a request they tour Arizona’s border with Mexico, he complained the Biden administration wasn’t focused on the seriousness of conditions.

“Arizona’s border communities have been on the front line of this border crisis. We’ve worked, again and again, to get the Administration to listen to their concerns,” Gallego said in a written statement. “When Arizonans complain about the government doing nothing to support them — this is exactly the type of behavior they’re talking about.”

It is part of a shift for Gallego to a president more to his liking and as border issues have evolved from walls and armed troops to shelter needs and soaring entries.

Gallego, a U.S. Senate candidate, is no longer speaking for an immigrant-friendly, left-leaning district in Arizona during the Trump years they despised. Instead, his words are now directed at a Democratic administration in a potential three-way Senate contest against Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., in a swing state amid rising public concern about the border.

Republicans say Gallego is playing politics on the border.

In an appearance with former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s “War Room” this week, Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake hit Gallego — and Sinema — over the border issue.

“Now he’s talking about the border. But every single chance he and Kyrsten Sinema had to help President Trump secure that border, they voted against it. Now, all of a sudden, they’re talking about the border.”

“Ruben Gallego spent years in Congress supporting the disastrous policies that created the crisis at our southern border,” said Tate Mitchell, a National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesperson. “Election season flip-flops won’t hide his record as an open-borders radical.”

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Hannah Goss, a spokesperson for Gallego’s campaign, dismissed Republican attacks on the issue.

“While far-right opportunists do nothing but fear-monger on an issue they have never even attempted to solve, Ruben Gallego has delivered more than $93 billion in border security funding to keep Arizonans safe — including physical barriers where they make sense — while also working to shore up a pathway to citizenship for those hoping to achieve the American Dream,” she said.

Gallego always has been blunt on the border, as with most issues. But his words now seem to reflect more of the urgency reported by sheriffs and border authorities about untenable conditions that have worsened this year after the end of a rule that allowed for expedited expulsions.

He still discusses the border as an economic force for good. At the same time, Gallego is seeking more federal aid for local law enforcement because of rising emergency calls.

Earlier this year, Gallego shifted his rhetoric on ending Title 42, the health rules that allowed federal authorities to rapidly expel border crossers that went into use during the pandemic.

He prominently noted his concerns about the fallout in managing the border once the program ended, aligning himself more with Sinema, whom he hopes to replace, and Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., who successfully defused the border issue with voters in 2020 and 2022.

Sinema has toured the border with Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, in 2021 and earlier this year. She is reportedly working with Democrats and Republicans on potential legislation to change the way asylum cases are processed.

As a candidate last year, Kelly memorably criticized President Joe Biden for proposing to do “something dumb” in his initial proposal to end Title 42.

For Gallego, the border issue remains a front-burner concern as he seeks to broaden his voter appeal and as public sentiment is running against Biden.

Gallego maintains he hasn’t changed his fundamental view of the nation’s border policies with Mexico: There is mutually beneficial cross-border commerce, the immigration system needs modernization and security is a real concern.

In a March interview with Leigh McGowan, host of the “PoliticsGirl Podcast,” Gallego ridiculed Republicans’ safety concerns along the border.

“They put bulletproof vests on and walk around like they’re in Baghdad,” the former Marine combat veteran said. McGowan laughed and called it “cosplay,” an assessment Gallego agreed with.

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In a July interview with Washington Monthly, Gallego struck a similar tone.

“Just because a portion of this country has a problem, we don’t call that whole area a mess,” he said of border communities. “This is very unfair. These small towns are thriving. They have some of the lowest crime rates in the country. This idea that this is such a war zone being put up by a Republican politician really affects these families down there and these businesses down there, and it’s not fair to them.”

In October, the Arizona Sheriff’s Association, which includes all 15 of the state’s county sheriffs, raised the policy stakes.

The organization asked the Republican-controlled Arizona Legislature for more border safety funding because they are seeing “more human trafficking and more sex trafficking” in Arizona with a rising number of undocumented immigrants.

Shortly afterward, Gallego penned a letter seeking federal funds to help local law enforcement officers, citing the ASA’s concerns, because first responders “face significant resource strains related to the migrant crisis.”

Gallego has discussed problems along the border in other forums.

In September, he complained that border security funding formulas sent far more migrant shelter money to New York than to Arizona. Asked about it on KTAR 92.3 FM, Gallego said he hasn’t changed his views, but he did use more pointed language about the stakes in Arizona.

“This isn’t anything different than what I’ve said when it comes to President Biden or President Trump or President Obama when it comes to the border,” he said.

“This is a national problem that we’ve been dealing for quite a while and I’m asking for a national solution specifically because listening to border towns and our communities that are actually at the front lines on this they’re being very clear that this (funding) that’s coming may not be enough to help them and we’re not getting the answers we need from them.”

About the same time, Gallego wrote to the Federal Emergency Management Agency seeking to lead officials on a tour of Arizona’s border to make the case that more funds for shelter and similar are needed. FEMA declined his offer, saying the border is not part of the agency’s “mission space,” Fox News reported.

Regardless, Gallego’s efforts sought to put distance between himself and Biden on an issue where the public is clearly unhappy.

Illegal border crossings have surged since Biden took office, a fact that Republicans from Trump down are eager to point out. The New York Times, for example, noted last month that border apprehensions have soared under Biden to record levels depending on how the numbers are counted.

At the same time, the inter-related issues of immigration and border security have gained traction as a source of public worry, mainly on the right.

Its resonance with voters nationally has moved around over time, but these days it shows up near the top, according to surveys on what the public is concerned about.

“Immigration” ranked third among all the issue choices in Gallup’s September polling on the nation’s most important problem. Only “government/poor leadership” and the “economy in general” ranked higher, Gallup found.

NBC News had a poll in September that found “immigration or border security” ranked third as the most important issue to voters surveyed behind abortion and protecting democracy. Importantly, the border issue’s importance had doubled over the past year, the poll found.

The Pew Research Center reported in June that “illegal immigration” ranked ninth in its survey of the nation’s top problems. That survey highlighted the partisan split on the issue, though.

Seventy percent of Republicans identified it as a top issue, Pew found. Only inflation and the federal budget deficit scored higher for GOP respondents.

By contrast, 25% of Democrats put illegal immigration as a top issue. Only international terrorism and unemployment ranked lower among Democrats.

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Gallego displayed a more buttoned-down approach to the issue in October during a videotaped confrontation with Lake at Phoenix International Sky Harbor Airport. Lake complained about the “invasion” along the border and Gallego said he looked forward to working with her if possible.

Gallego made another rhetorical pivot on Title 42, the longstanding health-related rule that Trump invoked in March 2020 in the early days of the pandemic.

Trump’s move allowed U.S. authorities to quickly expel border crossers on health grounds without the usual due process over asylum or immigration. The order only ended earlier this year after legal battles and dissent among Democrats over what to do about the border issue.

In May, just before Title 42 lapsed, a spokesman for Gallego’s congressional office said that the program was never a fix to the problems in the nation’s immigration system.

“Rep. Gallego has long been clear: our immigration system is in serious need of reform, and that Title 42 is not a long term solution,” Jacques Petit said at the time.

By contrast, in March 2022, Gallego seemed to welcome a return to the immigration system as it existed before the pandemic.

“The U.S. has made tremendous progress to combat COVID-19 since President Trump first instituted Title 42 at the beginning of the pandemic, and it’s time to resume processing asylum cases,” he told The Arizona Republic then.

As Title 42 was ending, Biden announced the deployment of 1,500 troops to the border to help authorities manage the transition from automatic ejection.

Gallego noted, “the announcement of additional troops on Arizona’s border is needed to alleviate some of the burdens our border communities.” It was a far different message than his pre-pandemic assessment that Trump’s idea of using troops was “stupid and detrimental.”

Gallego told KTAR in September he voted for “more border agents, more customs border police, more fencing” along the border. He cited that to underscore his view that Democrats are willing to address the full spectrum of issues, not just immigration-related legislation.

“You can have border security and you can have comprehensive immigration reform,” he said. “You can have both and that’s what needs to happen here.”

In 2017, when Trump wanted to build a border wall, Gallego wrote a scathing opinion piece in The Republic against it that argued against 2,000 miles of wall and didn’t back a 700-mile project, either.

“Trump’s border wall is trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist,” Gallego wrote. “Border apprehensions have been falling for years, and the border wall will do nothing about the real issue of visa overstays.”

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Ruben Gallego's rhetoric on the border has shifted since the Trump era