Looking to provide the fuel for the anti-immigrant judicial pipeline, the Republican Attorney General candidates in Texas, Arizona, and Kansas could shape national immigration policy for the worse.
Read the America’s Voice blog post exploring in more detail
Washington, DC – Ken Paxton (R-TX), Kris Kobach (R-KS), and Abe Hamadeh (R-AZ) are the three worst Republican Attorneys General candidates on the ballot this election. They each have put nativism at the forefront of their campaigns, but if they win in November, they will look to push their anti-immigrant agenda through the courts and onto the nation as a whole, with dire consequences for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and the future of Dreamers in this country.
While it has been long settled that immigration policy is the federal government’s prerogative, Paxton, Kobach, and Hamadeh are likely to take legally dubious statewide anti-immigrant legislation to court in an attempt to allow each state to add to the chaos and cruelty of the current system. And they will mount legal challenges to any attempt by the Biden Administration to address the broken immigration system. Read the America’s Voice blog post for the full details of these three state AG candidates and their nativism HERE and find a shorter summary below:
- Ken Paxton (Texas): He is in a league of his own when it comes to using his office to attack immigrants. He’s also, by far, the most corrupt Attorney General in the country. He is the primary user of the anti-immigrant judicial pipeline. Paxton started his work attacking Obama’s executive immigration actions in 2015, filing cases with Federal District Court Judge Andrew Hanen in Brownsville, Texas. Paxton hand-picked Hanen because he knew the Judge would be a reliable ally in the attack on immigrants — and he was.
- Abe Hamadeh (Arizona):Celebrating the attack on DACA from the U.S. Supreme court, he bragged to Newsmax that these sorts of attacks are “exactly why State AGs are so much more powerful than ever before. We’re leading the charge against Washington D.C. right now.” Hamadeh is also reportedly the child of undocumented immigrants who were ordered to leave the country before the charges were dropped and they became naturalized citizens. Now, Hamadeh is running an aggressively nativist campaign that echoes white nationalist conspiracy theories and viciously attacks those in similar circumstances as his parents.
- Kris Kobach (Kansas): He is an anti-immigrant zealot who has been peddling his nativist agenda for decades. Now, he hopes to use Kansas tax dollars to fund this culture war fight in the courts. Kobach is a committed ideologue that isn’t bothered by the facts against his arguments, but he is also just a bad lawyer. He also has a well documented history of connections with far-right militias, white nationalists, and Holocaust deniers.
According to Zachary Mueller, Political Director of America’s Voice:
“From helping lead the charge against DACA and Dreamers’ protections to advancing aggressive nativist challenges to long-settled immigration law, Ken Paxton, Kris Kobach, and Abe Hamadeh are the worst of the worst. This year’s state AG races are extremely consequential to safeguard American democracy and preserve basic human rights.”
Read the full detailed account of these three Republican Attorneys General candidates, here.
