U.S. Rep. Andrea Salinas, D-Oregon, spoke at a town hall at Parrish Middle School in Salem on Sunday, Feb. 2, 2025. (Photo courtesy of Alan Cohen/Oregon Capital Chronicle)
U.S. Rep. Andrea Salinas expects President Donald Trump to continue his war against immigrants and refugees, despite court rulings that have temporarily blocked his initial attempt to deny birthright citizenship to people born in the U.S.
Salinas, a Democrat who represents Oregon’s 6th Congressional District, focused on immigration during a town hall meeting Sunday in Salem, where more than 500 people sat and lined the walls of the gym at Parrish Middle School to hear her and Oregon’s U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley.
“His denial of birthright citizenship is unconstitutional. But he wants to challenge it in the courts,” Salinas said. “That’s his play — that he wants to take all of these to the Supreme Court to see where his full powers lie. So it is heartbreaking.”
A judge temporarily blocked Trump’s executive order last week in a lawsuit that Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield joined with his Democratic counterparts in Washington, Arizona and Illinois. A coalition of 18 other states and the District of Columbia filed a similar lawsuit as did the American Civil Liberties Union.
Birthright citizenship is guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, which became part of the U.S. Constitution in 1868.
For Salinas, a Democrat from Tigard whose district covers much of the mid-Willamette Valley, the issue is personal. She is the daughter of an immigrant who came to the U.S. when he was age 5 — and she has other relatives who were immigrants.
“Immigrants pay taxes,” she said. “They do not take anything out of our system. He is setting up smoke and mirrors so that in a few months, he can give a tax break to his rich and powerful friends,” unrelated to immigration.
Only in her second term, Salinas is now part of the House Democratic leadership — she was majority whip during part of her five years in the Oregon House — and is the top Democrat on the forestry and horticulture subcommittee of the House Agriculture Committee. Greenhouse and nursery products topped Oregon’s agricultural commodities at $1.2 billion in 2022, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The 425,000 immigrants in Oregon in 2022 played a key role in the state’s economy, making up more than 60% of the agriculture workforce, according to the American Immigration Council. The council said they paid $5.3 billion in taxes that year. Salinas said one way to challenge Trump is to seek allies such as the American Farm Bureau Federation, whose president has expressed concerns about Trump’s proposed mass deportation of immigrants without legal status in the United States.
“He has concerns about what it means for the economy and for farming,” she said.
During the town hall meeting, Salinas heard from a health care interpreter who told her that parents were unlikely to return with their children for care. Trump has rescinded a restriction on federal immigration agents conducting arrests in sensitive areas such as churches, hospitals and clinics, and schools.
“These are really scary un-American things combined with the intentions of the president,” Merkley said. “So that is why public response — inside and outside the Capitol — is going to be so important.”
The Pew Research Center estimates that in 2022 there were about 120,000 undocumented immigrants in Oregon.
Salinas said they should know their rights — and should call her district office to let her know what is going on. She said the glare of publicity may bring about quicker results than legislation or litigation.
“The third way is to communicate. If you see something that is not working, say something,” she said. “The two questions I keep asking are: Is it bringing down prices for Americans? Is it making our communities safer?”
Congress has been unable to move on immigration legislation for more than a decade, when the Senate advanced a bill on a bipartisan vote in 2013. But it died without a vote in the House, which then (and now) was under Republican control.
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