Michael A. Chihak: Ciscomani a sellout on immigration

Vendido is Spanish for “sold” and slang for “sellout.”

It appropriately describes Republican U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani of Southern Arizona’s 6th Congressional District for turning his back on people who are just like him, immigrants to the United States, and on those who believe in justice and human rights.

Ciscomani’s parents brought him as a child from Mexico, wanting better for their family, like millions whom the congressman has sold out with his politics. He supports the border wall, expanded immigrant detention, the “remain in Mexico” policy and strictly limited amnesty. Until recently, he was mute on the administration’s cruel anti-immigrant campaign.

His silence, as thuggish officers chase people down, assault them and drag them to inhumane detention facilities, makes him un vendido to Brown people, including U.S. citizens. That is, people who look like him and came from where he did.

Only after the president fired Kristi Noem as homeland security secretary two weeks ago did Ciscomani comment on the administration’s injustices toward immigrants and protestors.

“It’s a good decision for the country, and it’s something that needed to be done,” he said clinically, regarding Noem’s firing. If he truly thought so, he would have said it much sooner and with some juice to it.

He made the remarks to high school journalism students attending an Arizona Latino Media Association workshop at Arizona State University on March 6, the Arizona Republic reported.

Until then, Ciscomani said nothing to criticize the government’s tactics, including after officers killed two white U.S. citizens in Minneapolis as part of the jackbooted crackdown on immigrants and protesters.

Two months later, he saw fit to comment, telling the journalism students, “what happened there was terrible.” He then audaciously said the killings “added a light to some of the fixes that needed to happen.”

Where’s he been? Media and rights groups have been shining a light on this gangsterism for 14 months. Just now taking public notice demonstrates inexcusable political expediency by Ciscomani.

Despite his newfound awareness, his intransigence remained, as he parroted the government’s refrain at the ASU workshop: “We want people who are not here legally and committing crimes to be taken off our streets.”

We do, indeed, but be aware that just 13.2% of the 600,000 people deported in 2025 have violent crime records, as the libertarian Cato Institute reported, and 77% of those in deportation proceedings have no criminal records, as news outlet The Guardian reported.

Ciscomani raised no objections to the government deporting vast numbers of non-criminal immigrants, instead offering mealy-mouthed remarks that people who came here to work should not be ill-treated.

“We, in Arizona, understand,” he said at the high school workshop, inadvertently giving the young journalists a lesson in political prevarication.

Ciscomani said he wants people who came undocumented as children to have “a shot at the American dream.” That’s some weak tea, given that he has not supported the American Dream and Promise Act, H.R. 1589, which would fulfill his expressed desire, and which more than 200 House members support.

He is co-sponsor of the America’s Children Act, H.R. 5528, which would allow those whose immigrant parents have green cards to apply for their own green cards when they turn 21. It’s a good bill that would apply to about 250,000 young immigrants, but would leave 10 times that many “Dreamers” unprotected.

Ciscomani’s lack of support for them as a former child immigrant himself and his tepid acknowledgement of the ruthlessness directed at fellow immigrants make him, in vernacular he knows, un vendido.