WASHINGTON — A bipartisan group of lawmakers is calling on President Donald Trump to provide protections for some undocumented immigrants, marking a joint effort by both parties to temper the administration’s mass deportation efforts.
Reps. Maria Elvira Salazar, R-Fla., and Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, introduced legislation on Tuesday that would carve out some protections for certain immigrant workers who may be at risk of removal from the United States under Trump’s latest deportation policies. The bill, titled the Dignity Act of 2025, would allow undocumented immigrants without criminal records who have been in the country since before 2021 to apply for up to seven years of legal status.
“For 40 years, every president and Congress has looked the other way while millions have lived here illegally, many working in key industries that keep our economy running. It’s the Achilles’ heel no one wants to fix,” Salazar said in a statement. “The Dignity Act offers a commonsense solution: certain undocumented immigrants can earn legal status — not citizenship — by working, paying taxes, and contributing to our country. No handouts. No shortcuts. Just accountability and a path to stability for our economy and our future.”
The bill would implement certain requirements for immigrants to maintain their protected status, such as paying $7,000 in restitution fees over the seven-year period and regularly checking in with the Department of Homeland Security.
The protected status would not grant federal benefits to the immigrants nor would it secure a path to citizenship. The bill would also require employers to use E-Verify, an online system used to verify the citizenship status of employees.
The legislation comes in response to concerns that Trump’s latest deportation policies would negatively harm migrant workers, particularly those who work on farms or in the food industry, and the U.S. food supply. The proposal has been backed by more than a dozen House lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.
The bill also comes as the Trump administration has begun looking at ways to provide extra protections for migrant workers, including revised policies by the Labor Department to make it easier for undocumented workers to apply for work visas or temporary statuses.
Trump has acknowledged he wants to make it easier for migrant workers to be shielded from deportation despite recent raids from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement resulting in hundreds of arrests in recent weeks.
“We’re working on it right now. We’re going to work it so that some kind of a temporary pass where people pay taxes, where the farmer can have a little control, as opposed to you walk in and take everybody away,” Trump told Fox News. “What we’re going to do is we’re going to do something for farmers, where we can let the farmer sort of be in charge. The farmer knows. He’s not going to hire a murderer.”