KEY PLAYER PROFILE

Tom Cotton

Republican U.S. Senator from Arkansas

Immigration is a core issue for Republican Senator Ted Cruz. He represents a state that makes up over half the length of the U.S.-Mexico border, and has served on the Senate Subcommittee on Border Security and Immigration since he first took office in 2013. He ran for the Republican nomination for president in 2016. Although Cruz railed against Trump during the 2016 campaign, calling him a “pathological liar” and declining to endorse him at the RNC, he later became one of the president’s closest allies. In early 2021 he spearheaded the symbolic bid to overturn the 2020 election results.

Cruz is an uncompromising opponent of protections for undocumented immigrants, including the DACA program. At a campaign event in 2016, when a young DACA recipient asked whether a President Cruz would deport Dreamers such as herself, Cruz responded, “If you’re a DACA recipient it means that you were brought here illegally, and violating the laws has consequences.”

As the child of a Cuban immigrant himself, Cruz has long trumpeted his support for legal immigration. “There is no stronger advocate for legal immigration in the U.S. Senate than I am,” he told the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in early 2015, pointing to his record on H1-B visas. In 2013, he presented an amendment to the “Gang of Eight” immigration bill that proposed to increase the issuance of H1-B visas by 500 percent. Cruz argued that the increase would help American companies fill a shortage of STEM workers even though the program faced charges of widespread abuse and outsourcing.

However, as a candidate for the 2016 Republican nomination the H1-B amendment came back to haunt him. Conservative pundit Michelle Malkin called his proposal “nuts,” while fellow presidential primary candidate Rick Santorum argued it was a self-serving ploy to attract big-business donors.

Cruz promptly about-faced. His immigration campaign platform, released in November 2015, called for suspending the H1-B program for 180 days so claims of fraud could be investigated and necessary reforms made, as well as freezing any increase in legal immigration overall until the unemployment rate fell. He pledged to end the Diversity Visa lottery and limit citizens’ ability to sponsor their extended families for green cards, two points long sought by anti-immigration hawks. In place of the current employer-driven visa system, he would establish a skills-based “points system” to award visas based on factors like level of education, professional experience, and English fluency. Borrowing talking points from increasingly popular fellow 2016 presidential candidate Donald Trump, Cruz also promised to build a border wall and put an end to birthright citizenship.

In his successful 2024 reelection bid for the U.S. Senate, Cruz once again put a hawkish immigration platform front and center, repeatedly telling the story of a 12-year-old Houston girl who authorities said was murdered and sexually assaulted by Venezuelan migrants. Federal authorities said the migrants had entered the country illegally, were apprehended at the border, and then released in the country while awaiting immigration court proceedings.

SOURCES:

Cotton’S IDEAS

  • Border Security

    Cotton adhered closely to Trump’s “Four Pillars” immigration framework, which includes a trust fund to improve border security. The Secure and Succeed Act, which Cotton co-sponsored, sought an additional $25 billion for border security.

  • Border Wall

    Cotton supported former President Trump’s 2019 reallocation of emergency funds to build the border wall. Responding to opposition by Democrats, Cotton said, “Let's get to the root of the problem and secure our border once and for all. No more border crisis, no more emergency. It's as simple as that.”

  • Detention

    Cotton followed former President Trump’s lead on detention policy, including the controversial “zero-tolerance” child separation policy. He opposed Democrats’ attempt to pass the Keep Families Together Act in 2018, tweeting that it would encourage the trafficking and abuse of children.

  • Immigration Courts

    In 2020, Cotton and Senator Kelly Loeffler co-sponsored the ICE Act, which proposed to allow immigration judges to issue bench warrants for immigrants who fail to appear in court. “Each year, tens of thousands of immigrants disappear into the United States rather than show up for their immigration court hearings,” said Cotton. “Our bill empowers immigration court judges to enforce the rule of law and have these criminals detained.”

  • Undocumented Population

    Cotton has generally focused on undocumented immigration as a cause of lower wages for U.S. citizens, a conduit for illegal drugs, and a potential threat to national security. In 2024, he proposed ending birthright citizenship to children born in the country to undocumented immigrants.

  • ICE

    Cotton is a vocal supporter of ICE. He has condemned lack of Democratic support for ICE and claims that “Democrats, in their heart of hearts, want to abolish ICE.”

  • DACA

    Like other Republicans, Cotton has argued that DACA is an executive overreach. However, if paired with other measures such as increasing border security and ending so-called chain migration, Cotton supports granting permanent status to DACA-eligible undocumented immigrants on the condition that they obtain education, find employment, and abide by the law.

  • Asylum & Refugees

    In a 2019 interview with the Center for Immigration Studies, Cotton said, “Look, Guatemala, and Honduras, and El Salvador have many troubles. However, their citizens do not face the kind of persecution based on who they are or what they believe that our asylum and refugee laws were designed for.” Cotton supports asylum only under specific circumstances, particularly for refugees fleeing religious persecution and communist regimes. He supports barring asylum-seekers who crossed into the U.S. between ports of entry, as well as those who traveled through “safe third countries” en route to the U.S.

  • Central America Policy

    In a speech on the Senate floor in March 2016, Cotton said he supports “efforts to assist countries like Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador to develop stronger institutions and improve living conditions there. … At the same time, we cannot solve all the world's ills and our foremost responsibility is to Americans, not foreigners. We can help reduce the push factors in foreign countries driving migrants to our borders, but we are not obligated to accept their citizens into our country.” Cotton has not commented on any specific plan to provide assistance.

  • Visas

    In a 2019 interview with Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies, Cotton called the current U.S. visa system a “mishmash of quotas, and random set asides, and policies that are outdated and that no one can even explain.” He supports a complete overhaul of the immigration system, including ending the Diversity Visa lottery system and limiting family-based migration sponsorship to include only spouses and minor children. He has advocated for shifting to a “points system” where visas would be awarded based on factors like level of education, ability in English, and notable achievements. In 2021, he co-sponsored legislation with Senator Mitt Romney to tie an increase in the federal minimum wage to mandatory E-Verify usage for employers to discourage hiring of undocumented workers.

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