Cami Mondeaux is the congressional correspondent for the Deseret News covering both the House and Senate. She’s reported on Capitol Hill for over two years covering the latest developments on national news while also diving into the policy issues that directly impact her home state of Utah.
_This article was first published in the On the Hill newsletter. Sign up to receive the newsletter in your inbox on Friday mornings here._ SALT LAKE CITY — For as long as I have been cognizant of politics, immigration and border security have been at the center of the conversation.
It was a core focus of President Donald Trump's first and second presidential campaigns, and it's one of the main criticisms of former President Joe Biden's time in office. The disagreements seem to stem from a belief that you can have one or the other: compassion or the rule of law.Sen. John Curtis, R-Utah, believes you can have both. And not only that you can, but that you must in order for immigration enforcement to be successful.This isn't a new concept for Utah's junior senator. He's repeatedly called for more compassionate decisions when it comes to immigration enforcement, often calling it "a false narrative" that the country can't simultaneously practice empathy and the rule of law.He most recently alluded to this belief in an interview with CNBC's "Squawk Box" on what this would look like, drawing a comparison between Trump's and Biden's approach to immigration policy.I sat down with Curtis to discuss his views further — especially in the context of ongoing negotiations to fund the Department of Homeland Security."I think when people hear me say 'rule of law and compassion,' they all go to compassion, and they skip right over rule of law, " Curtis said. "And you can't have compassion if you're ignoring the rule of law."Curtis told me that recent concessions and policy changes from the Trump administration are a good example of what compassionate immigration policy is like.For example, he pointed to border czar Tom Homan's operational shifts in Minneapolis after the death of two U.S. citizens in January. He also pointed to White House concessions to allocate money for body cameras and visible identification for officers.That comes in contrast, he says, to the "open-border policies" under the Biden administration — which Curtis argued were not compassionate."One of the examples that came to mind to me as I was thinking about this interview is, look, I've raised six children. And there are times your own children would tell you it's not compassionate to make me clean my room, give me a curfew," Curtis said. "Parents who want to show compassion to their kids enforce the rules of the home. Compassion includes rul
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