Sen. Bernie Sanders unveiled his vision for overhauling the nation’s immigration system Thursday, including extending protections to many undocumented immigrants and “breaking up” border and immigration enforcement agencies.
The proposal, which Sanders’ campaign billed as “the most progressive immigration proposal put forth in presidential history,” is a blunt rebuttal to many of President Donald Trump’s immigration stances.
“The Trump administration’s treatment of immigration exclusively as a criminal and national security matter is inhumane, impractical, and must end,” the Sanders campaign wrote.
In his proposal, Sanders promises to “break up” Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. Calls to “Abolish ICE” have increased on the left as the Trump administration has ramped up enforcement actions. Sanders is the first candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination to call for the dissolution of ICE.
Sanders proposes dismantling the Department of Homeland Security and redistributing the authorities of ICE and Customs and Border Protection to other governmental authorities. As a congressman, Sanders opposed the creation of DHS in 2002 under the Bush administration, following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Sanders also promises to “demilitarize” the border and to reverse Trump’s approach of using a criminal statute to enforce immigration. He also plans to push lawmakers to pass legislation creating a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, and would press for reforms to deportation policies.
While many of the senator’s proposals would require support from Congress, he also lays out plans to use executive authority to reverse many of Trump’s immigration policies more swiftly. Through executive order, he would grant legal status to 1.8 million young immigrants eligible under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy implemented under the Obama administration.
Sanders would also use executive authority to immediately extend protections from deportation to all undocumented immigrants who have lived in the United States for more than five years. The Pew Research Center found that in 2017 about 80% of 10.5 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. have lived in the country for more than five years, meaning that about 8.4 million undocumented immigrants could be eligible for protections.
Eric Davis, professor emeritus of political science at Middlebury College, said Sanders’ platform is in part a reaction to Trump’s policies.
“I think his plan is more designed to address current hot button issues,” Davis said. “His proposal really deals with immigration from a human rights point of view because of a reaction against Trump.”
However, Davis warns this plan may overlook the hard stance Sanders could take against H1-B visas as president. These visas, available for highly skilled workers, are often used by tech communities to recruit international workers, and conflict could arise in those communities if the supply were to get cut under a Sanders administration.
Sanders also sketched out a plan to protect the labor rights of immigrants, proposing a mandated $15 minimum wage for farmworkers and domestic workers — two industries that rely heavily on undocumented and immigrant laborers. He would seek to require companies to follow safety regulations on heat stress and air quality measures for migrant laborers, or companies could see federal contracts revoked.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro are the only other two candidates who have publicly released immigration plans so far. Both called for the reorganization of ICE, and for the extension of DACA protections.
Cynthia Buiza, executive director of the California Immigrant Policy Center, said that out of the plans that have been presented by candidates so far, Sanders’ is the most “bold.” Because her organization is a nonprofit, it cannot formally endorse any candidates’ plan, but what excites her about Sanders’ proposal most is its focus on economic empowerment for migrant laborers.
“It is very important for us that policies that seek to address … problems in the communities we work with also address the economic factors that keep immigrants in these conditions of inequality in the first place,” Buiza said.
Despite the progressivism apparent in this policy proposal, Sanders has previously clarified how far he’ll go to welcome immigration into the United States. At an April town hall, Sanders said he does not support the idea of an open border, Politico reported.
“If you open the borders, my God, there’s a lot of poverty in this world, and you’re going to have people from all over the world,” Sanders said. “And I don’t think that’s something that we can do at this point. Can’t do it.”
In a conversation with the Wall Street Journal this summer about guest visas, Sanders said that Americans should be given first priority for jobs — an idea that has also been supported by President Donald Trump.
“Here we have in the state of Vermont … thousands of young people who are snowboarding, and they’re skiing, and they know how to do these things pretty well. And yet, if you go to some of the resorts, what you would find is that people from Europe and elsewhere were coming in as ski instructors,” Sanders told the Journal.
“If there is nobody who wants to do it, fine, you bring in people from elsewhere,” he said. “But you certainly make it clear that people in this country have first dibs on those jobs.”
In 2007, when an immigration reform package was close to passing through the Senate, Sanders voted against this bill — a vote he has been criticized for. One of his primary concerns was that the bill extended guest visa time periods, which could inflate the temporary, low-wage labor supply. He said this would decrease wages for low income Americans.
