The leading Republican proponents of the “DIGNIDAD Act,” a broad amnesty for the nation’s 11 to 22 million illegal aliens, have defied President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda — helping Democrats advance a plan to keep roughly 350,000 Haitians in the United States through Temporary Protected Status (TPS).
On Wednesday, Rep. Maria Salazar (R-FL), the sponsor of the DIGNIDAD Act, and Reps. Mike Lawler (R-NY), Don Bacon (R-NE), and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), all co-sponsors of the DIGNIDAD Act, voted with House Democrats to advance a bill that will stop Trump from ending TPS for Haitians.
Reps. Carlos Gimenez (R-FL) and Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY), neither of whom is a DIGNIDAD Act co-sponsor, also voted with Democrats to keep hundreds of thousands of Haitians in the U.S. in opposition to Trump’s agenda.
“I have one of the largest Haitian populations in the country in my district,” Lawler, who has recently been making the media rounds to defend his support for Salazar’s amnesty scheme, told the Washington Post.
“If you end [temporary protections] without addressing work authorization, it will cause a huge crisis in our health care system, especially in an area like mine, where a lot of our Haitian TPS holders are nurses,” Lawler said.
Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX), who has led the charge against Salazar’s DIGNIDAD Act, equated TPS for Haitians to a “backdoor amnesty.”
“It is an abject disgrace and a shameful betrayal of everything Republicans ran on in 2024,” Gill wrote on X. “All conservatives should vehemently rejected it. Unfortunately, the bill was just discharged on the House floor with 219 votes. We will vote on final passage of the bill tomorrow.”
The vote was led by Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), considered one of Congress’s most left-wing representatives, as well as Rep. Laura Gillen (D-NY), who is also a co-sponsor of Salazar’s DIGNIDAD Act.
The vote advances a plan by Pressley and Gillen to keep hundreds of thousands of Haitians in the U.S. via TPS for three years, just as the Trump administration is fighting in the Supreme Court to end TPS for Haiti.
“Extending TPS for Haiti is not only the moral and humanitarian thing to do—it’s also good policy. It’s good for families, it’s good for our economy, and it’s good for America,” Pressley said.
A final vote on the bill to codify TPS for Haitians for three years is expected later this week.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at [email protected].
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