KEY PLAYER PROFILE

Ruben Gallego

U.S. Democratic Senator from Arizona

The son of immigrants, Ruben Gallego was born in Chicago, raised in its suburbs and went on to become a Harvard graduate. In 2002 he joined the Marines and was deployed in Iraq where he experienced heavy combat and the loss of a close friend.

His military service has always been front and center in his political career, which began in 2007, the year after he left the Marines. He first worked as chief-of-staff to a Phoenix City Councilmember, and in 2009 made his own run at public office, winning an Arizona State House seat.

In the wake of Arizona SB 1070, the controversial act that empowered local law enforcement to request proof of citizenship (until that provision was struck down by the Supreme Court), Gallego formed Citizens for Professional Law Enforcement, a Super PAC that organized a recall effort for Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio. The group targeted Arpaio because he was a prominent booster for SB1070 and he had used taxpayer money to investigate Barack Obama’s citizenship.

In 2014, Gallego won a competitive 5-way Democratic primary and went on to win the general election to represent Arizona’s 7th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives. There he served as a member of the powerful Armed Services Committee as well as the Natural Resources Committee. He worked on legislation that helped Native American veterans obtain medical reimbursements more easily, and proposed a bill to provide Native American veterans more funding for college; it passed the House but the Senate did not take it up.

A staunch supporter of abortion rights and law enforcement, Gallego voted with Joe Biden 100 percent of the time as a member of the House. He became known for his pugilistic, off-the-cuff remarks, often over social media, challenging high profile members of the Republican Party and, in doing so, he became a favorite of the Democratic base.

At the beginning of 2023, he announced his candidacy for the Senate, shortly after Kyrsten Sinema, who held the seat, announced she was leaving the Democratic Party to become an independent. While campaigning for the Senate, Gallego, who had previously described himself as “a fierce liberal combatant,” struck a more middle of the road tone – and emphasized the importance of border security.

During the campaign he voted in favor of a bill that would prevent non-U.S. citizens from voting in local elections in Washington, D.C. – a measure he had previously voted against. Gallego also ran campaign ads with endorsements from sheriffs touting his efforts to bring more manpower, better technology and more resources to management of the southern border. At the same time, Gallego advocated for “sane, comprehensive immigration reforms, things that would take care of our Dreamers,” referring to the immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as small children.

Gallego won his bid for the Senate seat over Kari Lake and in early 2025 he was given a seat on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, the Veterans Affairs Committee, and the Banking, Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

The son of a Colombian father and Mexican mother, Gallego often cites his heritage as a factor that shapes his views on immigration policy. At the event that launched his Senate campaign, Gallego said, “I believed in my little Latino heart that if I worked hard, kept my nose clean, studied, that I would succeed and actually have an American dream. We Latinos can live the American dream, but we need to have somebody to actually fight for us, to actually believe in us.”

SOURCES:

Gallego’S IDEAS

  • Border Security

    In his campaign for the Senate, Gallego put forward proposals to increase funding for border patrol, border technology, and more border agents. In early 2025, he told the Arizona Mirror that he is willing to work with Trump’s administration on border security.

  • Border Wall

    While he has called Donald Trump’s vision of a border wall along the entirety of the southern border, “stupid” and “dumb,” Gallego has acknowledged that construction of limited barriers can be helpful to management of the border. “I think border walls are necessary in certain areas,” he told NBC news. “Putting border walls in areas that you don’t need only costs more money and then also costs manpower.”

  • Detention

    At the beginning of 2025, Gallego voted in favor of the Laken Riley Act, which requires the detention of any undocumented immigrant charged with theft or burglary, regardless of whether the alleged crimes are recent or in an individual’s distant past. He spoke out against the 2018 “Zero Tolerance Policy” from the first Trump administration, which resulted in the separation of children from their parents and minors being placed in detention facilities alone.

  • Immigration Courts

    No statement found.

  • Undocumented Population

    Gallego has expressed support for giving undocumented citizens who follow the law Temporary Protected Status. The U.S. Citizenship Act, a bill he co-sponsored, would have granted amnesty to the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country.

  • ICE

    Gallego has expressed his opposition to ICE workplace and home raids. After a series of such raids in 2016, then-Representative Gallego issued a statement saying, “Many who recently arrived in the United States from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras were fleeing violence and oppression. These families have already faced severe trauma in their home countries. Invading their homes in the middle of the night only adds to this distress. We shouldn’t be rushing to send these people back to what we already know to be extremely dangerous and life-threatening situations, especially when they present no threat to national security.”

  • DACA

    Gallego supports passage of the DREAMers Act.

  • Asylum & Refugees

    In 2023, Gallego sponsored The U.S. Citizenship Act, which would have added 25,000 visas over 10 years to be used for Syrian refugees. In May 2024, he also introduced H.R. 8496, which would have amended the Immigration and Nationality Act to provide broader language when considering an applicant’s request for asylum or refugee resettlement.

  • Central America Policies

    Gallego voted for the 2024 American Cooperation with Our Neighbors Act, which required the State Department to submit to Congress a strategy to strengthen subnational cooperation between the United States and Mexico related to “fentanyl and synthetic opioid trafficking.” It also required the State Department to conduct a “feasibility study on certain space-based telecommunications technologies for Mexico and countries in Central America and the Caribbean.”

  • Visas

    Gallego has supported expanding access to legal immigration on a number of occasions. In 2023, he co-sponsored the Healthcare Workforce Resilience Act, which would have helped “capture” 40,000 unused visas for nurses and physicians. The U.S. Citizenship Act, which he supported, would have allowed approximately 600,000 essential workers to receive green cards and would have shifted spouses and minor children of legal permanent residents to the unlimited immediate family visa category.

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