A Vulnerable Republican Takes On Both Parties Over Immigration

NEW YORK — One of the most vulnerable Republicans in the House is running on immigration — and taking on both parties over it.

Rep. Mike Lawler is hammering Democrats over “sanctuary” policies while criticizing the Trump administration’s aggressive — and at times lethal — immigration enforcement tactics.

“Renee Good and Alex Pretti should not be dead. But neither should Sheridan Gorman, and neither should Laken Riley, and neither should the thousands of people who have been murdered by people who are in our country illegally and committing crimes,” Lawler said at a candidate forum earlier this month. “So yes, ICE needs reforms, but you know what? Sanctuary jurisdictions should not exist. Criminals should be deported.”

Lawler is betting his self-described “common sense” approach can win him a third term in a suburban Hudson Valley district Kamala Harris carried in 2024. His race against Democrat Cait Conley, an Army veteran and first-time candidate, could help determine control of the House.

Immigration has helped Republicans win elections, but broad dissatisfaction with President Donald Trump’s policies has made it a less certain advantage this year. Lawler is pressing it anyway.

He’s run paid media on the topic and held multiple events decrying Democrats’ immigration policies. In a recent interview with a panel of local reporters, he even brought it up himself: “We did not touch on immigration, and I want to raise this because this is a real problem,” he said.

“Fundamentally, when you look at the challenge, I think most people want common sense, not extremism, on the issue of immigration,” Lawler told reporters after a debate with Conley earlier this week.

Whether that emphasis matches voters’ priorities is another question. A recent Emerson College poll found immigration ranked far behind the economy and threats to democracy among the district’s most important issues. And Trump, whose approval ratings are abysmal in New York state, is often at the center of the immigration debate.

Lawler has been able to criticize Trump without drawing the backlash other Republicans have faced. He repeatedly highlights his fight with the president to raise the cap for the state and local tax deduction, which Trump ended up praising him for at a rally earlier this year.

Other Republicans who’ve sought to create distance with the president haven’t fared nearly as well. Rep. María Elvira Salazar is just one. Trump eviscerated the Florida Republican after she released a campaign ad challenging his immigration crackdown.

Yet even Lawler’s leverage with Trump has limits.

He’s highlighted his support for extending Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, for Haitians, thousands of whom live in his district. When the Trump administration announced it would be ending those protections for Haitians earlier this year, Lawler made his opposition known, warning it was not safe to send people back to the country.

He said he’s been working on individual cases to support Haitians in his district. Jean Bernard Charles, who lives in Rockland County, told POLITICO that Lawler’s office was helpful in getting his wife to the country and he recommended his friends facing the same situation to go to the office for help.

Lawler also cosponsored legislation to extend TPS, which is stalled in the Senate. He argued that he’s fulfilled his role by passing a bill through the House and has blamed Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for not moving it along. (In response, Schumer's office said in a statement that the leader “moved to extend Haitian TPS on the Senate floor by unanimous consent and was blocked by Senate Republicans and President Trump, who Lawler constantly supports.”)

“I've explained this to the White House, repeatedly, that ending TPS was a stupid decision,” Lawler said at the forum. “I am opposed to it, and I will continue to fight back against it.”

The administration hasn’t budged, though. Community leaders in Rockland County, where the district’s Haitian community is based, say many immigrants are too scared to leave their homes. Some are growing frustrated that more isn’t being done.

“If there was the help, our folks would not be wearing ankle monitors,” said Nicole Hines, the NAACP's mid-Hudson and Westchester regional director.

Renold Julien, the executive director of Konbit Neg Lakay, a Haitian community center in Lawler’s district, pointed to Lawler’s close relationship with Trump, including the president coming to the district earlier this year and Lawler appearing at a meeting at the White House with Jewish leaders, some of whom are from the district.

“I feel bad for Mike Lawler,” Julien said. “Friends don't treat friends like that. … His friend Donald Trump is doing his best to create a problem between him and the dark-skinned immigrants here of Rockland.”

Conley has also questioned his work regarding Haitian TPS.

“He can have enough capital to get Donald Trump to fly out here and visit the district in May, to go to Dallas at Trump's midterm convention and be a keynote speaker, but he can't get Donald Trump to actually take care of people in the Hudson Valley and protect our Haitian community by extending TPS?” she asked.

When asked how she would advocate for Haitians if she wins — especially since she won’t have Trump’s ear like Lawler does — Conley said she thinks Democrats will win the Senate, clearing the way for the bill to extend TPS to get to the president’s desk.

Lawler has repeatedly bashed Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul’s recent law that ended cooperation between local police departments and Immigration and Customs Enforcement on civil immigration cases, and questioned why the state is not honoring the Department of Homeland Security’s detainer requests, as the agency has stated. The parents of Sheridan Gorman — a teenager from Lawler’s district who was killed earlier this year in Chicago, allegedly by a Venezuelan living in the U.S. illegally — have appeared on the trail with him a handful of times to criticize Democrats’ immigration policies.

“The sanctuary policies being pushed by Kathy Hochul and Democrats killed our daughter,” Jessica Gorman, Sheridan’s mother, said in an advertisement for Lawler. At an event last week, she accused Hochul and Conley of not caring about protecting families.

Hochul has waved off such criticisms, saying that law enforcement is still permitted to work with federal officials to remove violent criminals.

Even if immigration isn’t voters’ top concern, it’s a topic Lawler can own, said Sarah Chamberlain, the head of the Republican Main Street Partnership, of which Lawler is a member. The economy is a harder sell to frustrated voters, she added. Focusing on Hochul’s policy also taps into her middling popularity as she runs for reelection. Hochul’s opponent, Bruce Blakeman, has similarly been hammering the issue.

“He's been extremely successful finding middle ground on it,” Chamberlain said of Lawler, praising his focus on deporting immigrants who have committed crimes and noting the district’s proximity to New York City. “He uniquely can do it because it’s very specific to his district and to where he lives. Some other members couldn't be doing it the same way.”

Not everyone is convinced his approach will work.

“Mike Lawler is reading the tea leaves and realizing what we have been saying is true — that the vast majority of Americans across this country and in this state are against Donald Trump's mass deportation agenda,” said Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of NYIC Action, the political arm of the nonprofit New York Immigration Coalition. “While he may be doing a couple of vibes-oriented things to illustrate he’s not 100 percent MAGA and mass deportation, his actions actually speak louder than his words.”

Awawdeh said that even though Lawler has made some moves on Haitian TPS, that “doesn’t erase the horrors that he’s cosigned to date” in supporting increased funding for ICE. And while Lawler does back the Dignity Act — the bipartisan immigration reform bill that would create a vehicle for potentially millions of immigrants who entered the country unlawfully to gain work permits and remain in the U.S. legally — some immigrant advocates argue it doesn’t go far enough in creating a pathway to citizenship. The bill has yet to reach the House floor for a vote.

“Immigrant families are not props for his moderate image,” Awawdeh said.

When asked if he thinks his immigration message is getting muddled, Lawler said he has “never wavered in my position” and that most Americans “want the border secure, they want criminals deported and they want cashless bail gone.”

Lawler has sought to cast Conley as too weak on the border and crime, pointing to her support for revoking partnerships between local police and ICE, known as 287(g) agreements.

Conley told POLITICO she’s in favor of getting rid of those agreements because she wants “our local cops to be focused on protecting our local communities, not doing the federal government's job.” While she said former President Joe Biden messed up border security, she criticized ICE under Trump for “violence against American citizens” and not “prioritizing violent criminals.” She said she does not support cashless bail, which Lawler has repeatedly pointed to as a catalyst of crime, along with sanctuary policies.

Conley, though, has focused more of her energy on voters’ top concern this cycle: affordability. She said she hears concerns about paying bills and affording gas and health care more frequently on the trail, as opposed to immigration. She accused Lawler of using the issue as a “distraction” to “shift focus away from where he is failing our communities.”

Mike Madrid, a Republican political consultant, said it’s commendable that Lawler is finding balance on the issue but “the problem is no one’s making their voting decision based on this” and it “doesn't cut through the headwinds on the economy.”

Lawler thinks voters are picking up on the nuance.

“I've been leading on this issue for years, saying that the immigration system needs to be reformed,” he told POLITICO after a recent press conference slamming Hochul’s law. “These things are not in conflict. It's recognizing how complex our immigration system is, but it's also having common sense and applying it.”