Conservatives supported the Big Beautiful Bill on the promise that it would kick deportations and border enforcement into overdrive, and less than two weeks later Republicans have stabbed them in the back with an amnesty bill.
On Tuesday, Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, R-Fla., reintroduced the DIGNITY Act alongside a cadre of fellow Republicans as well as Democrats. Her office couched the legislation in words like “dignity” and “opportunity,” saying it will allow “certain long-term undocumented immigrants to earn legal status, without amnesty or a path to citizenship.”
Salazar gave a speech on Thursday directed at President Donald Trump that overflowed with the same lies and emotional manipulation we’ve heard for decades about illegal aliens. That we need illegal aliens to do work Americans just simply don’t have the will to do themselves, that aliens who crossed the southern border illegally are not criminals, that mass amnesty would catapult Trump to the status of a modern-day Lincoln or Reagan.
She even tried to morally blackmail Trump by reminding him that “the eye of history is upon us” and warning him that “if we get this wrong, future generations will pay the price in shame.”
Despite using just about every Democrat talking point in the book, no one is buying the spin. It’s amnesty by another name.
But a throwaway attempt by Salazar to flatter Trump underlines just how much of an outrage this is from the congressional GOP. Listing off Trump’s accomplishments over the last six months, she mentioned, “You signed the BBB [Big Beautiful Bill] the day that you said you were going to sign it.”
It’s strange that Salazar praises the Big Beautiful Bill as a great achievement when one of its major provisions stands completely at odds with her attempt to advocate for mass amnesty.
Trump and his administration consistently emphasized that the bill would enable mass deportations.
“The House needs to get this bill passed,” border czar Homan said before the bill’s passage. “The more money we have, the more bad guys we take off the street.” The White House boosted a statement from NumbersUSA that said, “The Trump Administration needs this funding to deport illegal aliens, millions of whom entered the country over the last four years.”
In an article titled, “20 Reasons Why Congress Must Unite Behind the One, Big, Beautiful Bill” the White House declared, “The bill permanently secures our borders by making the largest border security investment in history, funding at least one million annual removals of illegal immigrants and ramping up ‘mass deportation operations to a level never before seen in American history.’”
The White House summed it up: “Put simply, The Big Beautiful Bill will empower Big Beautiful Deportations.”
These promises rallied conservative support around the bill, even as many of its spending provisions proved to not be as conservative as fiscal hawks wanted.
The Big Beautiful Bill was supposed to be THE immigration bill, the one that would deliver on Trump’s campaign promises and allow him to decisively turn the tide on the issue. But congressional Republicans want to turn it into a bait-and-switch that gives them all of their spending schemes while they switch out the immigration provisions for mass amnesty.
Salazar voted for the Big Beautiful Bill, along with nearly every other House Republican behind the DIGNITY Act. So, she voted for the mass deportations that should result from the BBB, yet without any sense of shame she now pushes for amnesty. The fact that this new crusade comes so soon after what could be a historic turning point in our nation’s illegal immigration crisis makes it all the more outrageous. It clearly illustrates congressional Republicans’ apparent compulsion to betray their base just so they can claim to stand on the “right side of history.”
If he had any spine left, House Speaker Mike Johnson would have nipped this in the bud long before a media circus started. Now, Trump needs to squash it and hold true to the promises he made on the campaign trail and in the Big Beautiful Bill.