Social posts target Democrats’ vote on migrant offenders bill. Here’s why they say they opposed it.

U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., reintroduced legislation Jan. 3 she said would keep dangerous immigrants out of the country — people who have committed sex crimes or domestic abuse. 

On social media, critics used the occasion to deride House Democrats who first voted against the bill in September.

"There is no justification. 158 Democrats voted against deporting illegal immigrants who are convicted sex offenders," one Jan. 5 Instagram post said.

But the outrage overlooked some key facts about the bill, most notably that some Democrats who voted against it objected because they said it was redundant and potentially harmful to victims. 

Mace’s bill, originally titled Violence Against Women by Illegal Aliens Act (H.R. 7909), passed the U.S. House on Sept. 18, two months before an election with a campaign season heavy on anti-immigrant rhetoric. A then-Democratic-led U.S. Senate did not bring it to a vote. All House Republicans voted for the bill, as did 51 Democrats. One hundred fifty-eight more Democrats voted against the bill.

After Mace revived the stalled legislation — this time calling it the Preventing Violence Against Women by Illegal Aliens Act — critics on the right preemptively lashed out at Democrats.

"Republicans: Can we at least deport all the r*pists and p*edophiles?" a Jan. 4 Facebook post said. "Democrats: No."

Multiple social media posts panned the 158 Democrats who voted no, suggesting they chose to protect migrant sex offenders in the U.S. from being deported. That included Mace, who condemned Democrats in several X posts, and X owner Elon Musk, who wrote, "These awful people all need to be voted out."

Mace’s bill, reintroduced January in the new Congress as the Preventing Violence Against Women by Illegal Aliens Act, would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to establish criminal grounds for making non-U.S. nationals inadmissible and expand the crimes that make a person eligible for deportation, the bill’s summary said.

But Democrats and domestic violence groups who opposed the bill told PolitiFact that the law already provides for deportation of migrants convicted of sex offenses and crimes against children. And the bill’s language could have the unintended effect of harming immigrant domestic violence survivors, they warned.

"I voted against this bill for several reasons. First, it is redundant because all serious sexual and violent offenses already render someone deportable under the law," U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., wrote in an email to PolitiFact. 

Current U.S. law already makes inadmissible people convicted of crimes "involving moral turpitude," which courts generally define as crimes involving harm to people or property or fraud offenses.

Mace’s bill would add sex offenses and broaden the definition of domestic violence offenses in the "deportable aliens" section of the federal criminal code.

North Carolina University law professor Rick Su said aggravated felonies are already deportable offenses. Those are currently defined in the Immigration and Nationality Act — a law enacted in 1952 that governs U.S. immigration policy — to include rape, sexual abuse of a minor, all crimes of violence, child pornography and sex trafficking, Su said. 

Another section of current law already makes domestic violence, stalking or violation of a protection order, and crimes against children deportable offenses, Su said. The law also makes "crimes involving moral turpitude" deportable offenses.

"Even if domestic violence and sex crimes were not explicitly noted as deportable offenses, they would almost certainly fall under a ‘crime involving moral turpitude,’" Su said.

Critics of Mace’s bill also said it provides no protection for immigrant victims of domestic violence, who often can be charged with a crime if they use violence in self-defense.

Calling the bill and social media posts a "dishonest campaign," Wasserman Schulz said the proposed law could harm victims of violence and trafficking who acted in self-defense and said immigrants who lacked capacity to defend themselves "would have no remedy under this law." 

More than 200 groups that are part of the National Task Force to End Sexual & Domestic Violence wrote a letter in September to the House to oppose the bill, saying that it would negatively affect immigrant survivors of domestic and sexual violence.

Cristina Velez, legal and policy director for ASISTA, a group supporting immigrant victims of violence, said Mace’s bill would have created new inadmissibility grounds for noncitizens convicted of domestic violence, stalking, child abuse and protective order violations — a provision that would mirror existing deportability grounds. But the new law doesn’t include a waiver for domestic violence victims who face charges related to their abuse, as current law does.

Without that waiver, "there is a danger that survivors of (domestic violence) could be deported under this bill," Velez wrote in an email. "Survivors whose convictions trigger this ground could newly become deportable under this provision, including those whose convictions were connected to their abuse."

Grace Huang, the Asian Pacific Institute on Gender-Based Violence’s policy director, said that lack of waivers for such cases in the bill was her group’s main objection. 

"Sometimes the wrong person is arrested, or sometimes there is mutual violence (and) a predominant aggressor isn’t arrested," Huang said.

Huang said the legislation added to the anti-immigrant climate, demonizes immigrant communities, and makes it harder for survivors of violence to reach out for help.

Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., told PolitiFact in an email that he voted against the bill because it "would not actually solve any problems with our immigration system or border." Instead, he said, "it would result in harsh consequences for victims of domestic violence, while pretending to protect them." 

Nadler said the bill would expand the definition of domestic violence to include the Violence Against Women Act’s broader definition, which is typically used for grants and funding purposes, not in criminal law. 

"This broader, VAWA-based definition sweeps in a wider range of behaviors that domestic violence organizations say will implicate survivors who have used violence in self-defense, or who were accused by their abusers and were either unable to defend themselves or pled guilty to avoid having to go through the court process," he said.

Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee said in a fact sheet that despite the bill’s name focusing on "illegal aliens," the bill would "sweep in green card holders, those seeking to come to U.S. lawfully, and DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) and TPS (Temporary Protected Status) recipients."