Last month, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, warned voters not to be complacent and told the Lone Star State’s delegation to the Republican National Convention that “Texas is a battlefield.” In other words, Republican House and Senate victories aren’t guaranteed in a state that has voted for the GOP presidential candidate for 40 years.
Cruz, a constitutional lawyer, seeks a third six-year Senate term Nov. 5 and is challenged by Rep. Colin Allred, a Democrat and former pro football player first elected to the U.S. House in 2018.
Cruz and Allred differ on issues central to the 2024 presidential election, with border and immigration policy no exception. The two hold fundamentally different positions on the border wall, the “Remain in Mexico” and “catch and release” policies, and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
Border Wall
Allred, a former NFL linebacker-turned-politician, opposed a border wall before he entered the House of Representatives in 2019.
“Slipping funding for a wall we don’t want or need into a bill to fund our military is disgraceful,” Allred wrote on social media in July 2017, President Donald Trump’s first year in office.
During his campaign for the House in 2018, Allred referred to Trump’s border wall as a “racist wall.”
In 2019, he voted for a version of the annual National Defense Authorization Act that his congressional website said included provisions that prohibit “any funding in the bill to be used for the construction of a wall, barrier or fence along the southern land border.”
At the beginning of his second two-year term, Allred wrote on the social media platform X: “Building a wall is, and has always been a failed policy that won’t solve the issues we face at the border.”
Instead, the House Democrat believes in ensuring that “we secure our border and our ports of entry using 21st-century technology to tackle the complicated problems we face,” according to his congressional website.
In contrast to Allred’s opposition to completing a border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, Cruz repeatedly has voiced support for the wall and backed legislation to fund its construction. President Joe Biden halted Trump’s building of the wall after taking office in January 2021.
In May 2023, Cruz and several Senate colleagues introduced the FINISH IT Act, which his office says would “require the federal government to use previously purchased and unused border wall panels to extend the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border or to transfer them to state governments to be used for wall construction.”
“We need to build a wall to secure our southern border,” Cruz said in a press release announcing the bill.
Cruz voted in February against a Senate spending bill because, he said, it lacked “real, substantial additions to bolster border security.”
‘Remain in Mexico,’ ‘Catch and Release’
On May 11, 2023, the House passed a border security bill, HR 2, called the Secure the Border Act of 2023. It passed largely along party lines, with only two Republicans voting “no” along with all Democrats, including Allred.
If signed into law, House Republicans’ measure also would end “catch and release,” the policy of arresting illegal aliens at the southern border and then releasing them into the interior of the U.S. while their asylum claims are processed. It would reinstate the Trump-Pence administration policy known as “Remain in Mexico,” which requires asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico until their immigration court date.
Cruz is a vocal supporter of bringing back “Remain in Mexico” and ending “catch and release.” In September 2023, Cruz introduced the Senate version of the Secure the Border Act, but Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has yet to take up the bill.
DACA Recipients
Allred’s website says the House Democrat “believes strongly that people who were brought here as children and are covered by DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals] should be protected.”
Illegal aliens brought to the U.S. as children can qualify for DACA, created by President Barack Obama, and be protected from deportation.
Allred and other Democrats often refer to these beneficiaries as “Dreamers.” In July, Allred introduced the AmeriCorps Access for Dreamers Act, a bill that would make DACA eligible to receive the Segal AmeriCorps Education Award. This monetary prize may be used to repay student loans or pay for higher education.
“Our Dreamers know no home other than America and should have every opportunity to serve our nation, and this bill ensures that they have more pathways to do just that through AmeriCorps,” Allred said in a press release announcing the bill.
In 2019, Allred was an original co-sponsor of and voted for a bill called the Dream and Promise Act, which aimed to provide DACA recipients with permanent resident status. The House passed the bill, but the Senate didn’t.
Cruz, on the other hand, has voiced concerns over the legality of the DACA program.
When Trump sought to end DACA after taking office in January 2017, the move was met by lawsuits and the case eventually went to the U.S. Supreme Court.
On June 18, 2020, the high court ruled 5-4 against Trump’s actions. That same day, speaking on the Senate floor, Cruz called the Supreme Court’s ruling “disgraceful.”
The Supreme Court holds “that the Trump administration can’t stop implementing a program that is illegal,” Cruz said of the ruling, which allowed DACA to continue.
