Several groups representing immigrants and asylum seekers have rallied last week in front of U.S. Sen. Laphonza Butler’s San Francisco office as a potential deal on immigration and Ukraine aid looms.

Rallygoers said they were seeking to get her reassurance of a vote against a likely congressional deal that would trade concessions on border funding and put a cap on asylum applications in exchange for aid to Ukraine.

Butler’s staff members were also in attendance at the rally and the senator has expressed views that any changes to asylum seekers policies should be paired with pathways to citizenship.

“Biden promised he would give us a pathway to citizenship, but it wasn’t true. He is giving billions of dollars for the border,” said Enma Delgado, an immigrant and organizer with the immigrant rights group Mujeres Unidas Y Activas. “It hurts me when I see the news and those children crossing the border alone,” she added.

Roberto Arteaga, a member of U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla’s staff, also spoke at the event, reassuring rallygoers that the senator is a “champion” of immigrant rights and is opposed to the administration’s backing of the potential congressional deal.

“We are deeply concerned that the President would consider advancing Trump-era immigration policies that Democrats fought so hard against — and that he himself campaigned against — in exchange for aid to our allies that Republicans already support,” Padilla said in a press release from Monday. “Caving to demands for these permanent damaging policy changes as a ‘price to be paid’ for an unrelated one-time spending package would set a dangerous precedent.”  

“President Biden knows that is not what Democrats stand for,” Padilla added.

Republican leaders, however, view the two issues as related.

“The Senate cannot claim to address major national security challenges without a solution to the one we’re facing on the southern border,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a press release Thursday.

“We are horrified that the Biden administration is poised to trade away longstanding refugee protections and enshrine even more extreme anti-immigrant measures into law, including a ban on asylum for most people seeking safety at the southern border and a dramatic expansion of fast-tracked deportations.” Kate Jastram, CGRS Director of Policy and Advocacy

Other speakers included Blaine Bookey, legal director at the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at UC Law San Francisco. She related current asylum seekers’ stories to her own grandparents, who escaped Eastern European pogroms. 

“We are horrified that the Biden administration is poised to trade away longstanding refugee protections and enshrine even more extreme anti-immigrant measures into law, including a ban on asylum for most people seeking safety at the southern border and a dramatic expansion of fast-tracked deportations,” CGRS Director of Policy and Advocacy Kate Jastram said. “The proposals under consideration would extinguish critical lifelines for people fleeing deadly violence, separate families, and devastate immigrant communities.

“This would be another devastating blow to our immigrant community,” said Raul Gutierrez, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco.

“These refugees have the right to be heard,” he added.