(Headline USA) Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said this week she was worried Democrats would become less progressive on immigration as the border crisis continues to take a toll on American cities.
Speaking with Politico on Wednesday after Democrat Tom Suozzi won a special election in New York, Ocasio–Cortez claimed that Suozzi sounded a lot like the Republicans on immigration.
“We need to be very careful,” Ocasio–Cortez said. “You’re never going to out-Republican a Republican. I actually don’t think that it’s necessarily the playbook that would apply to the rest of the country.”
Suozzi was running to reclaim his former congressional seat after deciding not to run in the 2022 election, when he instead sought the Democratic nomination for governor. In his absence, the seat was successfully flipped Republican by former Rep. George Santos, who was subsequently expelled from Congress amid allegations of fraud.
Many, however, believe the once deep-blue New York may be turning a slightly more purplish hue, with the Biden administration’s controversial open-border policies being a prime factor.
“Nobody can believe what’s happened to New York,” former President Donald Trump observed in a recent interview, suggesting he could potentially flip it in the November election. “The people of New York are angry—people that would have never voted for me because I’m a Republican.”
🇺🇸TRUMP: WE'RE GOING TO FLIP NEW YORK, NEW JERSEY, NEW MEXICO, EVERYTHING
"New York has changed a lot in the last two years. We have migrants all over the street. They're living on Madison Avenue. Nobody can believe what's happened to New York. The people of New York are angry.… pic.twitter.com/iwsTgRXQOc
— Qingen Xu (@QingenXu) February 4, 2024
In his campaign, Suozzi expressed support for immigration restrictions—including a border wall—stricter asylum policies and deportations.
His ads also promised to “secure the border” and praised Immigration and Customs Enforcement as a “vital” agency.
“There’s a solution that’s been proposed in the United States Senate that would actually build more wall, would get more border agents, would deal with asylum seekers, would reform the laws to make it better, and would give money to the state of New York and the city of New York to deal with the migrant crisis that we currently have,” Suozzi said on the campaign trail.
Several other congressional progressives blasted Suozzi for abandoning the Left’s open borders agenda.
“His position is not necessarily the mandate for the future,” said Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz. “Those of us that live, work and represent the border need to be heard as much as the congressman from New York.”
House Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., agreed that Suozzi’s “rhetoric got a little more extreme” on immigration than she would have liked.
Others, however, saw Suozzi’s win as an example to follow in November’s election.
“Democrats should learn a lesson from NY-03,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., wrote in a memo Wednesday to fellow Democrats. “Quite simply, we risk losing the 2024 election if we do not seize this opportunity to go on offense on the issue of the border and turn the tables on Republicans.”
