California Republicans Still Face Heat Over Border Issue After Trump’s Executive Order

Jeff Denham (Justin Sullivan / Getty)
Justin Sullivan / Getty

President Donald Trump’s executive order on Wednesday to keep illegal alien families together when they are apprehended at the United States-Mexico border has not dissuaded Democrats from attacking Republicans over the issue in key congressional races in California.

“Trump’s executive order does not fix this crisis,” Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) tweeted Wednesday. “It gives no solution for the thousands of children who have been torn away from their families and remain separated.”

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), who is seeking reelection to a fifth term, tweeted, “The solution to the cruelty of putting children in cages isn’t to add their parents to those cages. Alternatives to detention work. We can enforce our immigration laws effectively with compassion – as was done under Presidents Bush and Obama.”

However, as Breitbart News reported on Monday, “The so-called ‘cages’ being used by federal immigration officials to detain child border crossers in detention facilities are the same barriers that were used by former President Obama’s administration.”

Photos taken from within the facilities in 2014 reportedly revealed “that detention of border crossers has largely remained the same under Trump as it was under the previous administration.”

This week, the Wall Street Journal reported that approximately 50 protesters gathered outside the office of Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Turlock) this week to denounce the separation of children from their parents on the southern border.

Denham, one of the Republican Party’s more moderate lawmakers, reportedly came under “intense scrutiny by his Democratic opponent after he struck a deal with House GOP leadership on a bill that would provide a pathway to citizenship for the so-called Dreamers, young people brought to the U.S. illegally by their parents, only after $26 billion was appropriated for border security and a wall.”

Denham and Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford) are facing particularly difficult battles to maintain their congressional seats.

Adelle Nazarian is a politics and national security reporter for Breitbart News. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.