Senators trying to power through an amnesty for illegal immigrants in 2007 were met with an avalanche of phone calls and faxes from angry voters, who helped doom the legislation to defeat.
The Senate’s internet server shut down at one point, and the phone system was overloaded on the day of the vote. NumbersUSA, a grassroots pressure group, said it alone accounted for 1.5 million faxes during the weeks of debate.
Fast-forward to today. Congressional offices can ignore faxes, delete emails and send callers straight to voicemail. The one place they can’t escape constituents is on social media, and that’s where a new immigration pressure group plans to hound them.
The Immigration Accountability Project, founded last year by two veterans from NumbersUSA, says it wants to help constituents slip into lawmakers’ feeds with posts demanding a get-tough approach to border security and to arm voters for in-person conversations with lawmakers at grocery stores and town halls.
“One thing they can’t turn off is they can’t turn off their social media. So we hold members of Congress accountable by really targeting their social media handles,” said Chris Chmielenski, the project’s president.
The Immigration Accountability Project had its first major battle this month as it took to social media with leaked details of the Senate negotiations over a border security deal. The results created a firestorm online and a wave of anger among House Republicans who vowed to reject such a deal.
The Republican negotiators complained that the information was wrong but didn’t provide countering details, only fueling the anger, particularly against Sen. James Lankford, Oklahoma Republican. Some of the senator’s constituents took to his social media account to demand answers. The criticism crescendoed with commentators riled up over what they saw as his betrayal.
Rosemary Jenks, the Immigration Accountability Project’s director of government relations, said that was the intention.
“We are basically letting all the public know on social media what a member of Congress is doing behind closed doors and letting them react to that member of Congress,” she said. “This is the epitome of holding someone accountable for his actions.”
On the other side of the immigration battle, activists are holding rallies, organizing internet campaigns and asking for phone calls to lawmakers’ offices to try to block Republicans from imposing new asylum limits or restricting the president’s catch-and-release powers.
The competing approaches raise questions about what sorts of pressure points can work to shape Congress.
Experts say the contours of pressure have changed as the internet rewrites the rules for how members of Congress interact with constituents and how the groups that seek to shape them become powerful political voices.
Letters and telegrams, which were standard, required effort and at least a postage stamp, suggesting the sender was invested in a position. Faxes and emails took much less effort but brought far more participation.
Social media is different. The investment of effort can be low, but the engagement is enormous. Unlike a letter to Capitol Hill, which only a low-level staffer might see, a social media post or reply to a senator’s post can be seen by thousands and help shape how others see the news.
Brad Fitch, CEO of the Congressional Management Foundation, which has studied voter interactions with Congress, said Capitol Hill is eager to listen to voters but must work hard to identify constituents.
“Our research is very clear. If they’re just sending Twitter messages without any local address, it’s virtually worthless,” he said.
The Congressional Management Foundation figures that about 50 million email messages per year go to the House and Senate and are generated primarily by third-party groups trying to build momentum for their stances. Form emails have “virtually no impact,” the foundation said, and individualized messages end up in the more influential pile.
Congressional offices tell The Washington Times that they try to evaluate electronic communications. Computer programs tally messages for and against an issue. Staffers can then look at specific messages to understand the appeals.
Offices also note when phone calls start flooding in, which signifies a more intense level of engagement.
Social media, particularly on platforms such as X, can be tricky. It may be tough to determine whether the message is from a real person or an automated bot behind the account.
Mr. Fitch said offices approach feedback differently. A spate of calls and emails about a community project can move the needle, but the Congressional Management Foundation’s research shows pressure campaigns on abortion, guns and immigration are trickier because lawmakers are ideologically seated on those issues.
“Immigration is a hot-button issue, and most of our research shows that members of Congress on ideological issues, that have had positions held for years … it’s very, very hard to turn a no to a yes,” Mr. Fitch said.
Ms. Jenks, who was part of NumbersUSA’s 2007 fax tsunami that helped derail the immigration bill, said the messages crucially showed where voters stood. Offices could stack the pros and cons and compare the levels of support.
Social media, she said, can replicate that influence with a public record of how people are lining up on an issue.
“Our goal is to hold individual members of Congress accountable,” she said. “Social media is the way we educate voters, so we need to tell the voters what their member of Congress is doing that they either like or don’t like so that those voters can express their views.”
The Immigration Accountability Project board has two former members of Congress, Tom Tancredo of Colorado and Dave Brat of Virginia, who said the group is tapping into a pressure point by cutting through social media noise to focus on voter sentiment.
“The job of this group will be to cut through that and get real citizen involvement in every congressional district to tell the congressmen and women this is real,” Mr. Brat said.
Immigration was one of the critical issues he used in his shock primary victory in 2014 over Eric Cantor, who was the No. 2 Republican in the House with a path to becoming a House speaker.
Mr. Brat said the border right now is a “70% issue” among Americans.
Part of the challenge for the group is calibrating the pressure on each target lawmaker.
Some are more active on Facebook. Others seem to prefer X or gravitate toward Instagram.
The Immigration Accountability Project has applied to be a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.