SUBTLE OPPOSITION

Congressman Mike Bishop (R-Rochester/Rochester Hills) in June opposed the administration’s zero-tolerance immigration policy resulting in thousands of children of undocumented immigrants illegally entering the country being separated from their parents — sort of. “As a father of three, Rep. Bishop does not want to see children separated from their families,” a Bishop spokeswoman told The Detroit News on Monday, June 18. Bishop added to his position the next day as pressure on President Trump to change the policy peaked. “I believe families should stay together while their cases are pending. For too long, hyper-partisanship has thwarted real solutions to fix our broken immigration system,” Bishop said in a release. Among the fixes, Bishop said he supports securing the border, ending family separations and closing loopholes. “In particular, we need to increase the number of federal immigration judges,” he said – a position with which Trump said he disagrees. Meanwhile, Bishop’s most likely general election opponent, Democrat Elissa Slotkin, beat him to the punch with a much stronger and focused statement condemning Trump’s policy of separating children from their parents at the border.