Activists rally in support of DACA, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, on June 15, 2022.
Mark Lennihan/AP Photo

Immigrant advocates in Congress are demanding with greater urgency that the Biden administration work to pass permanent protection for DACA recipients, including a pathway to citizenship. In a press call last week, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) said the president needs to “make clear that passing immigration legislation is a priority” before the end of the year.

But the congressional math isn’t there and is likely to worsen.The perennial DREAM Act, which would provide legal status to DACA recipients and other so-called Dreamers, was passed by the House last year but remains at a standstill in the Senate because there aren’t the 10 Republican votes needed to get it across the finish line. Sen. Dick Durbin, the Illinois Democrat who originally introduced the bill, said on the DACA press call he can currently count only on four or five Republican votes.

That’s where immigration supporters say Biden must come in. They argue that a president who prides himself as a legislative bridge-builder — and who has claimed major bipartisan wins for other interest groups — owes immigrant advocates the same.

“It’s clear that the ball is in President Biden’s hands,” said Greisa Mart?nez Rosas, executive director of United We Dream. “He needs to say that it’s his number one priority coming out of this Congress at the end of this year. He needs to say that clearly, publicly and many times. I think that he can use his bipartisan experience to bring Republicans to the negotiating table.”

The immigration community is not the only element of the broader Democratic coalition that feels left wanting after Biden’s first two years in office. Voting rights and police reform advocates also saw little progress on their causes, if not major setbacks. Women’s issue groups watched as some of their priorities were scrapped from Biden’s domestic agenda and as the Supreme Court overturned abortion rights.

But immigrant advocates note that some of their demands aren’t contingent on Congress or the courts, which makes it all the more exasperating as to why the administration has failed to deliver.

Some told POLITICO they simply wanted to see the administration remedy the harm caused by the Trump administration’s family separation policies. Others want to see follow-up on early proposals to protect immigrant workers in labor disputes.

The administration further angered the community last week when it announced plans to use the Trump-era pandemic policy, Title 42, to expel Venezuelan migrants crossing the border illegally as part of its new humanitarian parole program for them. Advocates decried the expansion of Title 42, which the Justice Department is fighting in court, as a continuation of the Trump “playbook.”

Still, Angela Kelley, chief adviser for policy and partnerships at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, defended the administration for its approach, which she said is centered around durability.

“Rather than shortcutting a process and trying to write a memo, there’s more elbow grease going into drafting a regulation. And I think that that’s really trying to instill good law and policy that won’t become just like at the whim of the next administration,” said Kelley, who served as Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ senior counselor on immigration until May. “But that’s just going to take longer, and there’s a lot of pent up demand … because there is a direct bearing on communities and individual lives.”

Kelley is hopeful the White House will take advantage of the legislative window she and others foresee coming during the lame duck session following the midterms. While she warned that the administration’s push might be quiet given the polarization around immigration policy, others said the time for private back channels had passed. Biden, they argued, needed simply to lean in more forcefully.

“This is a moment where he needs to use his bully pulpit but also his political capital to make sure that he’s delivering for immigrant youth who have been here since they were children,” said Marielena Hincapi?, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center. “There is no other time. Let’s not wait until the Supreme Court rules.”