Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) made headlines on Wednesday for suggesting he can find "common ground" with Thomas Homan, president-elect Donald Trump's "border czar" who has made deportations the number one priority since his appointment a few weeks back.
"We can deport people quickly under Title A, we can do 'stay in Mexico,' we can do so many things on policies that can work right away," said Cuellar during the interview with NewsNation's The Hill.
But besides laying bare his intent on collaborating with Homan, Cuellar was also somewhat critical about what the current administration and its Mexican counterpart have done so far:
"There's a lot of things that I think we can do, and certainly Mexico has done a lot, but they can do much, much, much more stopping fentanyl and stopping people from coming in"
Cuellar is hardly alone, as The Hill reports that a rising number of Senators are privately acknowledging the current Democratic administration could have done more when it comes to border policies, going as far as to acknowledge that such mistakes were a driving factor in Trump's sweeping victory in the past elections, which included Dem's losing four Senate seats.
The outlet cites a closed-door party meeting following the election in which Democratic senators discussed their defeats, noting frustration with the Biden administration's handling of a surge in migration.
Some lawmakers argued that the administration's decision to lift Trump-era policies, such as Title 42 program, which allowed for the rapid expulsion of migrants during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the "remain in Mexico" program, contributed significantly to voter dissatisfaction.
Several Democrats, including Sens. Jon Tester, Sherrod Brown, and Kyrsten Sinema, had warned in November 2022 about the consequences of ending Title 42 without a comprehensive plan. Sinema introduced legislation to extend the policy, which received bipartisan support but failed to gain broader traction.
"We destroyed ourselves on the immigration issue in ways that were entirely predictable and entirely manageable" said one Democratic senator to The Hill. "We utterly mismanaged that issue, including our Democratic caucus here. That's political malpractice. That's not someone else's fault. That's not the groups pushing us around."
A second Democratic senator said "a lot of Democrats think" Biden and other party leaders mismanaged the situation at the border and that border policy was "Biden's Achilles' heel."
Democrats had sought to deflect blame by citing Republican opposition to a bipartisan border security bill negotiated earlier in the year. However, this strategy failed to resonate with voters. Exit polls revealed immigration as a top concern, nearly on par with abortion, and trailing only the economy.
The final New York Times/Siena College poll of likely voters in the seven battleground states indicated that voters trusted Trump more than Vice President Kamala Harris on immigration showing a margin of 51% to 46% in favor of the Republican. These states, including Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin, played a pivotal role in the election outcome.
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