These 26 House Democrats Just Joined Republicans in Putting Immigrants at Risk

Let’s start with the good news. Earlier today, the House voted for the most comprehensive gun control legislation in decades.

Granted, that’s a pretty low bar given how averse Democrats have historically been to taking on the NRA. But it is a major step forward in the evolution of gun control politics.

The bill would require a background check for every gun sale or transfer (with exceptions such as giving a gun as a gift to a close family member; loaning a gun for hunting or target shooting; or providing a gun in the moment of self-defense). About 80 percent of firearms used for criminal purposes are obtained without a background check — through an unlicensed gun seller at a gun show, online, or person-to-person.

The bill passed 240 to 190, with 8 Republicans voting in favor and only 2 Democrats — Jared Golden (ME-02) and Collin Peterson (MN-07) — voting no. This is a major shift from a decade ago, and credit should go to the activists who have been working tirelessly on this.

But now the bad news. We haven’t advanced as far when it comes to our politics around immigration. Republican Doug Collins (GA-09) successfully added language that would require the federal background check database to notify Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) when an undocumented immigrant tries to buy a gun.

As Rebekah Entralgo at ThinkProgress explains, this puts immigrants and communities of color at risk:

Like the proposed No Fly, No Buy Act of 2009, which would prohibit gun sales to anyone in the federal Terrorist Screening Database, and a similar 2016 proposal introduced by Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) after the Pulse nightclub shooting, any piece of legislation that tips off federal authorities, ends up throwing communities of color under the bus.

These measures are often conducted in good faith, but have a small impact on the overall sale of firearms and frequently violate the civil liberties of marginalized communities.

Furthermore, such measures are premised on the false notion that undocumented immigrants commit crimes at higher rates than native-born citizens. Numerous studies have found that the opposite is actually true: native-born citizens are much more likely to commit crimes than immigrants, whether undocumented or documented.

Moreover, even in cases where someone was going to commit criminal activity, deporting them does nothing to deter this: it just puts a different group of people at risk. In other words, there’s simply no sound public safety justification.

But back to the vote itself. The only reason Collins was able to do this was that 26 Democrats joined the full Republican caucus save libertarian Justin Amash (MI-03) in voting for it. The vote was 220 to 209.

Here are the 26:

18 of the 26 were elected for the first time last November.