Latina Lawmakers Reintroduce the American Families United Act
A bipartisan beacon for mixed-status families is rekindled in the 119th Congress.
WASHINGTON—On Wednesday, two Latina lawmakers, Reps. Maria Elvira Salazar of Florida and Veronica Escobar of Texas, will stand before the press at 11AM ET to breathe new life into a cause that has long simmered beneath the surface of America’s immigration debate.
The American Families United Act, a bill they championed in spirit through their previous collaboration on the Dignity Act, is set to be reintroduced with a clarity of purpose and a quiet defiance of the partisan rancor that so often smothers such efforts. This is not merely a legislative maneuver; it is a moral summons, a plea to stitch together the torn fabric of families divided by a labyrinthine immigration system.
The bill itself is a targeted strike against the cruelties embedded in current law. It seeks to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act, granting immigration judges and officers the discretionary power to waive certain penalties—penalties that can lead to the deportation of spouses or children of U.S. citizens or the denial of their green card applications.
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The mechanism is simple yet profound: if separating a family would impose undue hardship on an American citizen—be it a spouse, child, or parent—the adjudicator can choose mercy over mandate. The legislation establishes a presumption that family separation is, in itself, a hardship worth preventing. It is a pragmatic fix, not a sweeping overhaul, aimed at the heart of a specific agony: the estimated 1.3 million U.S. citizens who have endured the exile of a loved one, and the 2.7 million more who live under that shadow.
The "why" is etched in stories like that of Edgar Falcon, an El Pasoan who married his wife, Maricruz, on the U.S.-Mexico border in 2013 after she was denied a visa—an anecdote that inspired Escobar’s earlier iterations of this fight. It’s in the daily commutes across borders, the children raised via video calls, the quiet despair of citizens whose rights seem to bend under the weight of bureaucratic indifference. Salazar and Escobar, both daughters of immigrant narratives, see this not as a partisan gambit but as a restoration of a foundational American promise: family unity.
Behind this legislative push stands the American Families United movement, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit that has become a rallying cry for those caught in this vise. Representing U.S. citizens and their spouses and children—the "highest priority for legal immigration," as their website declares—the organization has pressed for solutions that balance citizen rights with immigrant realities.
Their leader, Ashley DeAzevedo, embodies the mission’s urgency. In a letter to then-President Joe Biden last June, she laid bare the stakes: "We write as American citizens whose families have been ripped apart due to outdated provisions of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act."
She spoke of families forced into exile or underground, of citizens penalized for love, and urged executive action to bridge the gap Congress has failed to close. DeAzevedo’s voice, amplified by a community of thousands, is not just a lament—it’s a demand for dignity, a call to "fix 96" and end the "permanent bar" that banishes spouses for years, if not forever.
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Yet, the bill’s path through a GOP-controlled House and Senate is a steep one. The 119th Congress, with Republicans holding slim majorities—say, 221-214 in the House and 53-47 in the Senate, as projections suggest—remains a battleground of competing visions.
Salazar, a maverick Republican, and Escobar, a respected Democrat, have proven their bipartisan mettle before; their Dignity Act garnered 38 cosponsors across party lines, from Florida’s Mario Díaz-Balart to Michigan’s Hillary Scholten. But the current House, led by a Speaker attuned to the party’s hardline base, is unlikely to embrace even this modest reform without a fight.
A discharge petition, requiring 218 signatures to force a floor vote, looms as a potential lifeline—though it’s a procedural unicorn, rarely sighted in the wild. In the Senate, the filibuster’s 60-vote threshold looms larger still, and while some GOP senators might be swayed by the bill’s narrow focus on citizen families, the broader immigration debate’s toxicity could poison the well.
Still, there’s a flicker of possibility. The American Families United Act isn’t amnesty dressed up as reform—it’s a scalpel, not a sledgehammer. In a Congress where grand bargains falter, its specificity might just thread the needle. Salazar and Escobar, with their shared (ish) heritage and divergent politics, are betting on it. At 11 a.m., they’ll step to the podium not as ideologues but as lawmakers who’ve seen the human cost up close—and who believe, against the odds, that Washington can still muster the will to mend it.