In January 2025, every Republican member of the Texas congressional delegation cosigned a resolution declaring that the southern border had been invaded. Three months ago, one of those same cosigners put her name on a bill to shield millions of the people who crossed that border from deportation.
The bill is the DIGNIDAD Act (H.R. 4393), formally titled the “Dignity for Immigrants while Guarding our Nation to Ignite and Deliver the American Dream Act of 2025.” It was introduced in July 2025 by Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL) and Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-TX). The acronym is the Spanish word for “dignity.” As of this week, it carries 39 cosponsors: 20 Republicans and 19 Democrats.
Among the Republican cosponsors is Rep. Monica De La Cruz (R-TX-15), whose South Texas district stretches from the outskirts of McAllen north through Edinburg and into the ranch country above the Rio Grande Valley. De La Cruz is also an original cosponsor of House Resolution 50, the Jodey Arrington resolution that formally declares border states were “invaded” from 2021 through 2024 under Article I, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution.
She signed both.
The DIGNIDAD Act establishes what Salazar calls a “Dignity Program,” a seven-year deferred action framework that would protect eligible illegal aliens from deportation if they have lived in the United States for an extended period, pass background checks, and pay restitution and back taxes. The bill also includes mandatory E-Verify for all employers, physical border barriers, technology upgrades, and asylum system reforms. Salazar insists it offers no path to citizenship and no access to federal benefits.
That framing has not held up well under scrutiny. In an interview with a local ABC affiliate, Salazar acknowledged that she hopes a future Congress will create a pathway to citizenship for those who receive legal status under the bill. Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX-26) put it bluntly: the DIGNIDAD Act “gives amnesty to any illegal alien that crossed the border before 2021, any illegal married to a U.S. citizen, and also massively expands visas, including permanent residence for F-1 international students.” Senator Mike Lee responded to the bill’s proponents with a single observation: “When you have to say, ‘it’s not amnesty,’ it’s usually amnesty.”
The bill exploded across social media on April 7 after Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) promoted it on Fox News, triggering a wave of opposition from Republican members and conservative commentators. Gill, who represents a North Texas district, led the charge, calling the bill “mass amnesty” and “a terrible betrayal of our voters.” Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) called it a flat betrayal of the mass deportation mandate voters delivered in 2024.
The White House has kept its distance. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt stated last July that President Trump “will not support amnesty for illegal aliens in any way” but declined to say whether he would veto the specific bill, noting the president had not read it.
The Resolution That Goes Nowhere
The contrast with Arrington’s H.Res.50 is stark. That resolution carries the entire Texas Republican delegation as cosponsors. It invokes Article I, Section 10, Clause 3 of the Constitution, which reserves to states the sovereign power to repel an invasion and defend their citizens when the federal government fails to act. It also cites Article IV, Section 4, which obligates the federal government to protect each state against invasion. The resolution declares, as a formal congressional finding of fact, that from 2021 through 2024 the Biden administration failed to execute immigration law and failed to defend border states.
The statistical case laid out in the resolution’s “whereas” clauses is extensive: monthly apprehensions exceeding 200,000, criminal offenses by illegal immigrants increasing over 100 percent year over year, sex offense arrests up over 1,000 percent, and thousands of pounds of seized fentanyl sufficient to kill every American multiple times over.
Sixteen Texas Republicans cosigned as original cosponsors: Keith Self, Jake Ellzey, Randy Weber, Beth Van Duyne, Pat Fallon, Troy Nehls, Nathaniel Moran, Brian Babin, Roger Williams, Dan Crenshaw, Lance Gooden, Monica De La Cruz, Morgan Luttrell, Ronny Jackson, Tony Gonzales, and Michael McCaul. Several of those members, including McCaul and Luttrell, have announced they will not seek re-election in 2026. Arrington himself, the resolution’s author and chairman of the House Budget Committee, announced his retirement in November 2025.
The resolution was referred to the House Judiciary Committee in January 2025. It has received no hearings, no markup, and no floor action. It sits untouched in a Republican-controlled House.
One Congresswoman, Two Positions
De La Cruz’s presence on both documents captures the incoherence at the center of the Republican immigration posture.
In January 2025, she affirmed that her border district had been invaded. By July 2025, she cosigned a bill that would grant legal status to millions of the people who participated in that invasion. By January 2026, she was publicly advocating for new visa categories for undocumented construction workers in South Texas. By March 2026, she personally intervened to secure the release of an 18-year-old detained by ICE at the El Valle Detention Facility in Raymondville, an asylum seeker from a family who had entered the country under Biden-era policies.
De La Cruz represents a district that is more than 80 percent Hispanic and sits directly on the border. The political pressures are real. But the constitutional claim embedded in H.Res.50 is not a matter of political convenience. Either the border was invaded, with all the constitutional weight that term carries, or it was not. A member of Congress cannot simultaneously declare an invasion and then sponsor legislation to normalize the presence of those who invaded.
The Deeper Problem
The juxtaposition between H.Res.50 and the DIGNIDAD Act illustrates something larger than one congresswoman’s contradictions. The Republican Party in Washington has spent four years building a constitutional and legal framework around state border sovereignty. Governor Abbott declared an invasion under Article I, Section 10 in January 2024. Twenty-five Republican governors backed him during the Eagle Pass standoff. The Texas Public Policy Foundation published research defining “invasion” under the Compact Clause. The Federalist Society hosted originalist analysis supporting the state self-defense theory. Arrington filed and re-filed his resolution across three consecutive Congresses.
None of it has produced a binding result. The resolution that would formalize the invasion finding as a congressional record, material that could matter in future Supreme Court litigation, has gone nowhere. Meanwhile, a bill that would effectively legalize the consequences of the invasion is gaining cosponsors.
For Texans who have spent billions on razor wire, border wall construction, and Operation Lone Star, the message from Washington is difficult to misread. Congress will declare the border invaded when it is politically useful. It will move to legalize the invaders when that becomes politically useful too. The constitutional argument, the one that might actually matter in court, collects dust in the Judiciary Committee.
Arrington is leaving Congress. Several of his Texas cosponsors are following him out the door. The DIGNIDAD Act is gaining momentum. And the resolution that was supposed to lay the legal groundwork for state sovereignty at the border has not moved an inch since the day it was filed.
The border may have been invaded. But in Washington, invasions come with expiration dates.
The Grassroots Are Ahead of the Delegation
On the same day the DIGNIDAD Act exploded across social media, the Comal County Young Republicans posted a demographic visualization of Texas from 1970 to 2025, showing the state’s population shift from 89 percent White and 7 percent Hispanic in 1970 to 39 percent White and 40 percent Hispanic in 2025. The accompanying text read: “Texans didn’t ask for this. This wasn’t put up for a vote. Our elected officials have failed to represent Texans. Instead, they encouraged immigration and left our borders wide open. Now they’re passing a ‘Dignity’ bill to grant amnesty.”
They continued: “We weren’t even dignified with the chance to oppose this invasion.”
Every line of that statement tracks directly to the structural argument for Texas independence. Texans didn’t consent to the policies that transformed their state. They have no mechanism within the federal system to stop those policies. Both parties have presided over the transformation. And even now, under unified Republican government in Washington, the outcome is another amnesty push rather than enforcement.
The Comal County Young Republicans identified the problem with precision. What they may not realize is that their own party has already endorsed the solution, twice.
Plank 20 of the 2024 Republican Party of Texas Platform declares that “federally mandated legislation that infringes upon the 10th Amendment rights of Texas shall be ignored, opposed, refused, and nullified,” and affirms that “Texas retains the right to secede from the United States.” Plank 203 goes further, calling on the Texas Legislature to pass a bill requiring a referendum for the people of Texas to determine “whether or not the State of Texas should reassert its status as an independent nation,” and designating that referendum as a legislative priority. Both planks passed with over 90 percent delegate support at the 2024 RPT State Convention in San Antonio, receiving stronger backing than planks on border security, election integrity, or support for the Armed Forces.
The logic is not complicated. If Washington will not secure the border, and if both parties have proven across four decades and seven administrations that they will not, then the question is not which party to trust. The question is whether Texans will continue to outsource the survival of their state to a system that has demonstrably failed them, or whether they will exercise the right their own party platform says they retain.
Congress declared the border invaded and did nothing. Congress is now moving to legalize the invaders. The RPT platform already contains the answer. The only thing missing is the political will to use it.
The June 2026 RPT State Convention in Dallas is less than two months away. Delegates from every county in Texas, including Comal, will once again have the opportunity to reaffirm Planks 20 and 203 and send an unmistakable message to Austin: the grassroots have spoken, and the Legislature needs to act.
