Mexican-Born Congressman Blasted by Relative for Border Stance
Happy Friday, readers!
Lawmakers won’t return to the Hill till Tuesday.
In the meantime, here’s a story of family drama brewing in Arizona...
---
On Tuesday we learned that Congressman Juan Ciscomani (R-AZ) has a brother-in-law who teaches Latin American history at Arizona State University.
Dr. Alexander Aviña quote tweeted his congressional cuñado after the GOP lightweight representing Arizona’s 6th District posted a video of remarks he delivered during another House Republican photo-op at the southern border.
In the video Ciscomani, born in Sonora, Mexico and naturalized in 2006, unironically and with a straight face gives his full-throated endorsement of the House GOP’s position on immigration and border security.
“I believe in the American Dream that I’m living,” the congressman says before gesturing toward the border. “But this is not it.”
If the fact that Ciscomani is an immigrant himself wasn’t enough, Dr. Aviña, his brother-in-law, reminded the congressman that his own parents-in-law came to the United States as undocumented immigrants.
“This anti-migrant migrant is so pissed cos he & his family (allegedly) came to the US ‘the right way’ & waited years for the citizenship process to proceed,” Dr. Aviña tweeted. “Bro, you married the daughter of proud undocumented migrants—my parents. Tantita madre, wey.”
Never Heard of Ciscomani?
That’s because no one has.
The one memorable thing Ciscomani has done on Capitol Hill is sit beside Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) during the humiliating bipartisan vote to end that historically inept House speakership.
And Ciscomani was only sitting there because McCarthy had taken the last available seat, an empty suit just out of frame in hundreds of photos of McCarthy getting vacated.
Once a senior adviser to Arizona’s former governor, Doug Ducey, Ciscomani now auditions for a starring role as a Latino token for the “right way and wrong way to come here,” as a former Department of Homeland Security secretary under Obama, Jeh Johnson, has put it.
Ciscomani’s brother-in-law, Dr. Aviña, insists that the congressman wasn’t always this way.
“Juan was a senior advisor to Gov. Ducey who tried to be more politically and socially moderate relative to the racist xenophobic wing of the Arizona GOP,” Dr. Aviña says. “It was fear of his own party’s right flank that pushed him to be full anti-immigrant when he began his House campaign in October 2021, fully endorsing Trump's border and anti-migrant policies. That was the last time I had contact with him. It’s a position he maintained during the election, and he continues to work with the GOP on anti-immigrant policy.”
“My parents came to the U.S. in the late 1970s as undocumented migrants,” Aviña continues. “My siblings and I were born in the U.S. We moved back to Mexico in the mid-1980s but the country’s economic meltdown forced us back to the U.S. It was then, in the late ‘80s, that my father’s employer, the owner of a thoroughbred racing horse ranch, helped him start the legalization process.”
Like Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Marco Rubio (R-FL), Ciscomani advocates for rules that would have seen his own family’s immigrant story end less happily. Ciscomani may have never met his wife, the daughter of formerly undocumented migrants.
“I would like to stress that my parents are proud of what they did in coming to this country without papers — the sacrifices, risks, and struggles — to give their kids a shot at a better life,” added Dr. Aviña. “For poor migrants, ‘coming the right way’ is practically an impossibility.
“Ciscomani's anti-migrant policies insult and denigrate the struggles of my parents and millions more.”
“What makes me mad,” Aviña said, “is he’s allowed himself to be used by Republicans to support white supremacist policies. He could be using that to alleviate human suffering but chooses not to. Juan acts like he’s the embodiment of the American dream who came here the ‘right’ way, essentially saying my family didn’t deserve to be here because they came the ‘wrong’ way.”
— Arturo