Texas Democratic Senate candidate Colin Allred is featuring his wife in campaign ads to cast himself as tough on the border and immigration. Just four years ago, she sued to secure the release of dozens of illegal immigrants held at federal facilities in California, including one who was charged with assaulting and threatening to kill his girlfriend.
Alexandra Eber, who married Allred in 2017, sued federal immigration officials in 2020 on behalf of nearly 100 illegal aliens seeking their release from Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities in California, according to federal court records. Eber, an attorney at the firm Cooley LLP, partnered with the liberal American Civil Liberties Union in the class-action lawsuit, which argued the illegal aliens should be released because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The attorneys fought for the release of 35 illegal aliens with other criminal records. Those immigrants included Anthony Alexandre, a Haitian migrant who was charged in 2016 with felony domestic violence for stalking, assaulting, and threatening to kill his girlfriend. Alexandre, who entered the Otay Mesa facility in February 2020, argued that his "asthma as a child" and "high blood pressure" made him a candidate for release from the ICE facility, according to the San Diego Tribune.
Now, Eber is appearing with her husband in television ads for his long-shot campaign against Republican senator Ted Cruz. In an ad entitled "Teammates," Eber praises Allred for working with Republicans on a "common-sense bill" to secure the border. The couple does not specify the bill in question, but Allred's campaign touts his support for a "bipartisan" bill, the Dream and Promise Act, which would grant amnesty to so-called DREAMers. And Allred has endorsed a controversial bill drafted by Sen. James Lankford (R., Okla.) that would raise the cap on foreign visas and allow nearly 2 million illegal border crossings each year.
It's part of Allred's bid to rebut GOP claims that he has been soft on border security and illegal immigration. Allred, elected to the House in 2018, has promised in other campaign ads to "fix the border" and boasted that he "stood up to Joe Biden on the border." But Cruz and his Republican allies have dismissed that tough border talk as a campaign ploy.
The Republicans have highlighted Allred's remarks in 2022 that concerns about a historic migrant surge were ginned up by the "right-wing echo chamber." In 2018, Allred said he would oppose the construction of a "racist wall" at the southern border.
"We are not going to have a wall in this country," Allred said.
Eber in June 2020 joined a lawsuit against ICE, seeking the release of hundreds of illegal aliens held at the Otay Mesa Detention Center and Imperial Regional Detention Facility in southern California. In May 2020, a federal judge granted the release of 65 illegal aliens from the facilities because of medical conditions that put them at heightened risk from COVID-19. ICE declined to release 35 illegal aliens deemed to have medical conditions because of their criminal histories.
But that wasn't good enough for Eber and her partners at the ACLU. They argued for the release of all inmates with medical conditions, regardless of their criminal histories, according to court filings.
"To be clear, Plaintiffs seek an order from the Court releasing all medically vulnerable people, further reducing the population in both facilities to permit proper social distancing, prohibiting new admissions at both facilities, requiring regular and systematic COVID-19 testing, and mandating a number of other basic coronavirus prevention measures," they said in an Aug. 28, 2020, court filing. Eber remained involved in the case until it was dismissed on March 20, court filings show.
Allred has embraced other activists who espouse left-wing causes he now rejects on the campaign trail.
He campaigned in June and last September with Dallas pastor Frederick Haynes, who has praised anti-Semitic preacher Louis Farrakhan as a "wonderful man," called Israel an "apartheid" state the day after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, supports reparations for slavery, and says supporters of the border wall "may well go to Hell," the Washington Free Beacon reported. In 2019, Allred invited imam Omar Suleiman, who has called for "intifada," to give the opening prayer at a House session.
Allred isn't the only border-state Democrat running to the middle on the immigration issue. Fellow Democratic congressman Rubén Gallego, who is running for Senate in Arizona, released a television ad with an endorsement from an Arizona sheriff who has compared federal border agents to the "Gestapo" and openly supports "porous borders."
Allred's campaign did not respond to a request for comment.