Johnny Garcia speaks during the Democratic primary in May. Credit: Stephanie Koithan

Congressman-elect Johnny Garcia said one of his top priorities after being sworn in will be working across the aisle to create a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrant workers — a step beyond the legal protections proposed in existing bipartisan legislation.

Garcia, a San Antonio Democrat who won Tuesday in a Republican-gerrymandered district, told reporters on a Friday call with civic engagement and advocacy organization VotoLatino that the change is necessary for the South Texas economy.

“We depend heavily on migrant labor and folks that help our economy move in Texas, and making sure that we’ve paid attention to the needs of the community,” Garcia said. “So thankfully, I’m going to be focused on working with folks in our Democratic Party as well as working across the aisle as well so we can pass legislation that is ultimately going to serve and benefit our communities here.”

Garcia added that some builders and construction workers he’s spoken to in South Texas support the Dignity Act, a bipartisan proposal that would provide legal status to migrant workers. However, Garcia said he’s more interested in “providing a real pathway to citizenship, especially here in Texas.”

A former Bexar County sheriff’s deputy and self-described ‘Blue Dog Democrat,’ Garcia rode a blue wave fueled in part by unprecedented Latino voter turnout to Congress this cycle.

Latinos swung in Trump’s favor in 2024. However, the president’s broken economic promises and harsh immigration policies led the same voting bloc to reject the GOP in this week’s contest, U.S. Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Washington, said during VotoLatino’s press call.

“As soon as the 2024 election was over, Republicans broke promise after promise,” DelBene said. “They didn’t lower costs. They didn’t go after the worst of the worst with ICE. Instead, they delivered the most anti-Latino agenda defined by sky-high costs and out-of-control ICE operations.”

Even so, President Trump doesn’t appear concerned that Latinos helped the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee win 27 districts on Tuesday that Republicans won by double digits or more.

Moments before VotoLatino’s press call, Trump appointed Stephen Miller, the architect of the White House’s mass-deportation program, as his new acting chief of staff.

“Once again the Republicans are not reading the room,” VotoLatino CEO Maria Teresa Kumar said of Miller’s appointment. “The fact that all of a sudden you saw the biggest shift in the Latino vote in a ruby-red districts on the Southern Border was because they not only took it a step too far, but they basically made brown bodies vulnerable in real, material ways.”

Garcia will be sworn in on Jan. 3.

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Michael Karlis is a multimedia journalist at the San Antonio Current, whose coverage in print and on social media focuses on local and state politics. He is a graduate of American University in Washington,...