Monica De La Cruz helped a DACA recipient. Advocates say she's holding up broader protections
U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz recently launched a campaign ad featuring the wife of an immigrant protected by an Obama-era policy, thanking the South Texas congresswoman for assistance as the family navigated "a broken immigration system."
"We reached out to Monica De La Cruz. She helped with my husband's immigration case," Stephanie Villarreal says to the camera.
De La Cruz has made a point of spotlighting her work on behalf of families swept up by the Trump administration's deportation crackdown. But in Washington, she is among the Republican holdouts on a bill with some bipartisan support aimed at protecting families like the one in the ad.
Immigrant rights groups and Democrats said De La Cruz has refused to be the final signature they need to force a vote in the GOP-led House.
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The legislation would codify safeguards for recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which grants immigrants brought to the U.S. as children an opportunity to legally work and remain in the country.
Villarreal's husband, Juan Chavez Velasco, is a DACA recipient who was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents as he tried to visit their daughter in the neonatal intensive care unit earlier this year.
"If it is true that DACA is an issue that she deeply cares about, as we were told by her legislative team, and if it is true that she wants to be a champion for people with DACA, the Dream and Promise Act should have been a very simple sign-on for her," said Dani Marrero Hi, deputy director of LUPE Votes, which is a political advocacy group encouraging people to contact De La Cruz and ask her to sign the discharge petition.
De La Cruz's office said she doesn't sign on to efforts to force floor votes as a general policy, and is cosponsoring a different bill giving some protections to DACA recipients.
The Edinburg Republican islocked in a highly competitive racein the 15th Congressional District against Democratic challenger and Tejano musician Bobby Pulido. The already Republican-leaning district was redrawn last year to shore up GOP support. But Pulido and his party are campaigning to win over Latino voters who have soured on the Trump administration's economic policies and mass deportations. Earlier this month, The Cook Political Report changed its rating of the race from "Lean R" to a "Toss Up."
Under President Donald Trump's sweeping immigration enforcement operations, DACA recipients have become exceedingly vulnerable, and dozens of them have already been deported.
U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, D-Houston, started a discharge petition to force a vote on the legislation, known as theAmerican Dream and Promises Act, after Republican leadership refused to advance it. The bill would give DACA recipients conditional permanent resident status for 10 years and a path to citizenship, while also allowing eligible recipients of Temporary Protected Status and Deferred Enforced Departure to obtain lawful permanent resident status.
Right now, the petition has 217 of the required 218 signatures. Garcia's office said it has been working alongside groups in De La Cruz's district to pressure her to be the final signature that gets the bill to the floor.
"It's just one signature - if she wants to help DACA, the petition is just sitting there waiting for her to be #218," said Garcia's chief of staff Chris McCarthy.
De La Cruz's office didn't outline any concerns or objections to the bill, but said she doesn't sign discharge petitions. The office also pointed to her cosponsoring a different bill, called The Dignity Act. That legislation also offers DACA recipients conditional permanent resident status for 10 years, and then a pathway to lawful permanent resident status, but also includes changes like authorizing DNA testing to verify family relationships of immigrants.
"The Dignity Act aims to protect American workers by ending illegal labor, securing the border, reforming our broken asylum system, and strengthening support for border communities," De La Cruz's office said.
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Both primary sponsors of the Dignity Act - Reps. María Elvira Salazar, R-Fla., and Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso - have signed Garcia's discharge petition.
Salazar, a Miami-area Republican, recently broke from Trump more explicitly on immigration. Earlier this month, she released an ad in which she directly addressed the president, saying "some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far.
"The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today," she said.
De La Cruz's ad doesn't mention DACA, name President Donald Trump or address his broad-scale immigration enforcement operations. When she posted the ad on social media, she said she was fighting in Washington for "common sense immigration policies."
De La Cruz has said that only violent criminals should bear the brunt of the president's deportation agenda. After reports emerged that ICE had detained immigrants with no criminal convictions, she voted with Republicans to keep funding the immigration agency's operation..
Over the last few months, she's touted her work on high-profile detention cases. Beyond the recent campaign ad, she has also been involved in helping tosecure the release of three mariachi students from McAllenand a nun who was arrested while on her way to church, also in McAllen.
"As I have repeatedly said, our immigration enforcement should target violent criminals," De La Cruz said at the time. "A Catholic nun on her way to church is not a threat to our community."
Pulido has been particularly critical of De La Cruz's votes for ICE funding and has called the congresswoman's efforts to help constituents detained disingenuous.
"You go vote for it and then you say, 'Oh this is not right. I'm not for this," Pulido said. "And then put a little token bill that doesn't really mean anything out there just to say, 'Look I'm trying something.' No, you voted to fund it, and that's what's going on right now."
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This article originally published at Monica De La Cruz helped a DACA recipient. Advocates say she's holding up broader protections .
