Hold Roundtable in DC with over 100 Advocates Representing Broad National Coalition of “Business, Badges and The Bible”

WASHINGTON (TIP): Last week, Congressman Tom Suozzi (D-NY) and Texas Republican Congressman Morgan Luttrell (R-TX) brought together a broad, national coalition of stakeholders to a roundtable at the U.S. Capitol to focus on Bipartisan Common-Sense Solutions for Border Security and Immigration. Over 50 people attended in person, with over 70 more joined by Zoom to kick off a coalition of “Business, Badges, and the Bible” to join with immigration advocates.

Suozzi sought out conservative Texas Republican Luttrell, a former U.S. Navy SEAL who survived a deadly helicopter crash during his service, to join the effort. Luttrell, who serves on Homeland Security, stated, “We are working together to find the best way forward for our country on these important border security and immigration issues.”

Suozzi was recently appointed to the Homeland Security Committee, where he met Luttrell, and serves as Chair of the Democrats for Border Security Task Force. “The U.S. faces an immigration crisis because too many politicians have spent too many years ‘weaponizing’ immigration policy-fighting across the aisle—but haven’t done a thing to fix it,” Suozzi declared.

“The goal of our new coalition is to introduce bipartisan legislation that will 1) secure the border, 2) fix the broken asylum system, and 3) modernize legal immigration,” he stated.

Suozzi and Luttrell face a daunting challenge: finding common ground with Democrats and Republicans in a bitterly divided Congress in an election year.

“Business, Badges, and The Bible”- is a unique coalition to push Congress for solutions.

Suozzi explained this unique partnership by saying:
“‘Businesses’ have a huge stake in immigration reform. Farmers, hospitals, construction, hospitality, and manufacturers all need an immigration fix to better plan the future of our nation’s economic health. Immigrant workers have become essential to the U.S. workforce, contributing across sectors and playing a noteworthy role in our country’s economy.”

“‘Badges’ represent our country’s law enforcement community and must focus on community policing, not immigration law. They need ‘order at the border’ to better protect our communities.”

“By using ‘The Bible,’ I refer to those fundamental values, both religious and secular, that Americans have embraced –that all men and women are created equal and are entitled to human respect and dignity. Spiritual and secular leaders of all kinds can join hands to practice what they preach: the golden rule, human dignity, and the worth of all people.”

As a Member of Congress, Suozzi has visited the southern border three times, meeting with border patrol agents, local law enforcement officials, mayors, businesses, and nonprofits. “It’s clearly not working,” he stated.

“The present immigration system is hopelessly outdated. The original asylum process was created during the ‘Cold War.’ In the United States Refugee Act of 1980, America was happy to provide a safe haven to individuals fleeing persecution in the Soviet Union, Cuba, and other communist and authoritarian regimes,” he explained.

“But today, organized crime ‘coyotes’ and cartels are mercilessly scamming the system by instructing migrants on the language necessary to access the asylum process and coaching them to give falsified stories claiming ‘credible fear” in their own countries. These migrants automatically gain access to our country until a hearing can take place, sometimes as long as six years later,” Suozzi added.

Recent statistics show that just 18% of those ‘credible fear’ claims are eventually accepted. Immigration courts have a backlog of more than 3.5 million cases.

When Suozzi realized that Congress would not pass the Senate bipartisan immigration reform bill earlier this year, he joined with Republican Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick and, on May 8, 2024, called on President Biden to use his Executive Authority to “help bring order to the border and expand our tax-paying labor force by extending legal work permits to the 1.1 million immigrant spouses married to U.S. citizens.”

A month later, Suozzi stood at the White House when the President announced his executive actions to bar migrants who cross our southern border unlawfully from receiving asylum.

Suozzi, who won February’s congressional special election by “leaning into” the immigration issue during the campaign,” gave Democrats a much-needed dose of election-year optimism and a model for navigating one of their most significant political liabilities: the migrant influx overwhelming the southern border.

The New York Times said, “Mr. Suozzi may have just helped write a playbook” for his party by forcefully taking on the immigration issue.

Suozzi is a first-generation American whose father came to America as a young boy and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal with three Clusters during WWII. He attended Harvard Law School on the G.I. bill and became a Judge, rising to the courts of the New York State Appellate Division. “My father’s immigrant story is a big part of who I am. For my family, it was the classic American Dream. It saddens me now to see how the very word -immigration- has taken on such a negative connotation,” Suozzi revealed. “Only bipartisan, common-sense solutions will fix what’s broken,” Suozzi said. “Democrats and Republicans in Washington must work together to pass bipartisan immigration reform legislation to firmly secure our borders and establish clear, legal paths to citizenship,” Suozzi asserted.