One-hundred fifty-eight House Democrats voted Wednesday against a resolution put forward by South Carolina Republican Rep. Nancy Mace that would designate noncitizens convicted of sex offenses or domestic violence inadmissible to and deportable from the U.S.
Two-hundred fifteen Republicans voted in favor of the Violence Against Women by Illegal Aliens Act, with no one in the party opposing it. Meanwhile, only 51 Democrats voted in favor of the resolution, with 158 voting against it. Mace, who introduced the resolution, told the Daily Caller that “158 Left-wing members of Congress just voted against deporting rapists, pedophiles and murderers of women and kids.”
Meanwhile, Democrats have been largely silent on their vote against the resolution. In May, House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jerry Nadler explained his opposition to Mace’s resolution, saying the bill is “dangerous.”
“By layering immigration consequences onto the existing challenges of talking about domestic abuse, this legislation will almost certainly create a chilling effect in immigrant communities with regard to the reporting of crimes of domestic violence. Further, this bill attempts to create a new ground of inadmissibility for domestic violence which does not require a conviction and does not have any of the exceptions that currently exist in the deportability grounds,” Nadler said during a May hearing.
