Mother Jones
It wasn’t long ago that Sen. Jeff Sessions was waging a lonely battle against comprehensive immigration reform. ABC News called the Alabama Republican a “lone wolf” in his dogged quest to kill the Senate’s immigration reform bill, which passed the upper chamber in June 2013 on a 68-32 bipartisan vote. At one point, Sessions introduced an amendment to slash the number of immigrants allowed to enter the country legally—not even Texas firebrand Ted Cruz voted for it.
But Sessions’ days of fighting immigration reform from the sidelines are over. Last week, he became chair of the Senate judiciary subcommittee on immigration. The new face of Republican immigration policy has yet to make headlines like his anti-reform ally in the House, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), whose inflammatory rhetoric about undocumented immigrants (“deportables“) has made him a household name within the Latino community. But Sessions is just as hardline as King. And now his party has place him in a high profile position in the nation’s ongoing and contentious immigration debate.
“By choosing Sessions, Senate Republicans are handing over the agenda and a megaphone to their leading anti-immigrant voice,” America’s Voice, a pro-immigration-reform group, said in a seven-page memo circulated to reporters that enumerated Sessions’ anti-immigration track record.
Continued here:
Step Aside, Steve King: Meet the Right’s Most Powerful Immigration Foe
