AUSTIN, Texas \u2014 Immigration enforcement and border security are emerging as issues in the U.S. Senate race after a Venezuelan man was shot by an ICE agent in North Austin Sunday. During a Texas Tribune Festival appearance Thursday, Democratic nominee James Talarico laid out his broader approach to immigration.<\/p>\n
Talarico appeared Thursday at the Texas Tribune Festival, where he spoke broadly about immigration and argued that security and a welcoming system do not have to be treated as competing goals.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can have a system that keeps out people who mean to do us harm and welcomes folks who want to contribute to this nation. That is absolutely possible,\u201d Talarico said.<\/p>\n
The renewed focus on immigration comes after Venezuelan national Wilber Garces Perez was shot by an ICE agent in North Austin Sunday. Talarico did not specifically mention Sunday\u2019s ICE-involved shooting during his Thursday appearance, but he had reacted to the incident earlier on social media.<\/p>\n
In a post on X after the shooting, Talarico wrote, in part: \u201cThis isn\u2019t law enforcement. It\u2019s lawlessness.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the festival, Talarico said voters are frustrated by what he described as a forced choice between enforcement and compassion.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think what people are tired of is those two things being pitted against each other. Of us being told, you gotta pick between security and welcoming the stranger. And we don’t have to pick between those things,\u201d Talarico said.<\/p>\n
Several high-profile Texas Republicans, including Ken Paxton, Gov. Greg Abbott and Sen. Ted Cruz, have not publicly commented on the shooting.<\/p>\n
James Henson, Director of the Texas Politics Project, said Republican voters are unlikely to be swayed by criticism of immigration enforcement.<\/p>\n
\u201cRepublican voters are likely to be reserving judgment on what happened here. They favor strict immigration enforcement and are probably not gonna be moved by criticism here very much,\u201d Henson said.<\/p>\n
Henson said it is unclear whether the incident will affect polling as the November election approaches, but he suggested it could be more politically useful for Democrats than Republicans.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we’ll see when we see polling numbers. I think it probably doesn’t have a huge impact that we’ll be able to trace directly to this. I think ultimately it’s better story for Democrats than it is for Republicans when it comes to both of their efforts to win in November,\u201d Henson said.<\/p>\n
The Texas Tribune said it invited Paxton to speak at the festival this week but had not heard back from his team. Paxton\u2019s campaign also had not responded to a request for comment about Sunday\u2019s ICE-involved shooting as of Thursday afternoon. Talarico also challenged Paxton to a debate on Fox News.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AUSTIN, Texas \u2014 Immigration enforcement and border security are emerging as issues in the U.S. Senate race after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":447015,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":["post-447014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=447014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447014\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/447015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}