BS BULLETIN:

• Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed referred to illegal immigrants as “undocumented Americans” during a 2020 episode of his podcast.
• In the same discussion, he referred to them as “our undocumented sisters and brothers” while attacking Trump’s immigration policies.
• The old recording is resurfacing as El-Sayed campaigns for Senate after previously calling for ICE to be abolished.

Abdul El-Sayed has called for abolishing ICE.

But an old recording now resurfacing may explain considerably more about how the Michigan Democratic Senate nominee views the immigration debate.

In a May 2020 episode of his America Dissected podcast, El-Sayed was criticizing President Donald Trump’s immigration policies when he used a rather remarkable phrase.

“Undocumented Americans.”

The discussion came during the early months of the COVID pandemic, when El-Sayed argued that illegal immigrants were particularly vulnerable.

“We have deemed their labor, quote-unquote, essential, while deeming their existence illegal,” El-Sayed said.

Then came the line: “And this pandemic has hit undocumented Americans hard.”

Later in the episode, El-Sayed referred to illegal immigrants as “our undocumented sisters and brothers.”

Those remarks are getting new attention because El-Sayed isn’t merely a podcast host anymore. He’s the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in Michigan. And immigration enforcement has already become one of the major fault lines in his race.

El-Sayed has previously advocated abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, arguing that the agency itself should not exist in its current form.

When Fox News host Jesse Watters pressed him on that position last month, El-Sayed argued that America needs an immigration enforcement system that “actually works” and suggested returning to something resembling the old Immigration and Naturalization Service that existed before ICE was created after 9/11.

But he did not abandon his underlying criticism of ICE. The newly resurfaced 2020 comments add another dimension.

El-Sayed argued during the podcast that Trump had “weaponized immigration for his political purposes,” pointing to DACA, the public-charge rule, border detention and ICE enforcement.

He also framed illegal immigrants alongside previous generations who immigrated to the United States seeking better lives. “Unless you’re Native American or black,” El-Sayed said, listeners’ parents, grandparents or great-great-grandparents came to America for similar reasons.

But “undocumented Americans” goes considerably further than arguing for humane treatment of immigrants. American citizenship is a legal status.

An immigrant living in the country illegally may eventually become an American citizen. Until that happens, however, calling that person an “undocumented American” effectively removes the distinction between being present in America and being American.

And El-Sayed didn’t appear to stumble into the formulation once. In the same discussion, he deliberately described illegal immigrants collectively as “our undocumented sisters and brothers.”

In recent weeks, old comments and positions on ICE, health care, Sharia law and other issues have resurfaced as he campaigns against Republican Mike Rogers for Michigan’s open Senate seat.

Now voters have another old quote to consider. And this one manages to compress an entire immigration philosophy into two words.

MY QUICK TAKE

“Undocumented Americans” isn’t just progressive word salad. It’s actually a pretty revealing political phrase.

For decades, the immigration argument contained two separate questions: Who gets to live in America, and who gets to become an American?

Those aren’t supposed to be the same question.

Citizenship has rules, obligations and a legal process precisely because becoming an American is supposed to mean something more than successfully crossing the geographic boundary.

But listen to the language change over the years.

Illegal alien became illegal immigrant. Illegal immigrant became undocumented immigrant. And now, apparently, we’ve arrived at undocumented American.

Notice what disappeared along the way?

The immigrant.

That’s the politically interesting part. Change the vocabulary enough and eventually the policy argument changes with it. If somebody is already an “American,” deportation doesn’t merely sound like enforcement anymore. It sounds like throwing an American out of his own country.

El-Sayed may have said it six years ago.

But two little words tell voters quite a lot about where he starts the immigration debate today.

DBS WIRE SOURCES:

• Breitbart — El-Sayed called illegal immigrants “undocumented Americans”
• The Daily BS — El-Sayed discusses abolishing ICE during Jesse Watters interview
• The Daily BS — Previous reporting on El-Sayed’s resurfaced record