Following the killing last month of a second Minneapolis protester by immigration enforcement agents, Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., took to The New York Times to urge his colleagues to use the tragedies as an opportunity to finally come up with a comprehensive fix for the nation’s failed immigration policies.  

As a perennially vulnerable Republican from a Democratic state, Lawler is keenly aware that what had once been his party’s most politically potent issue had suddenly become a vulnerability that jeopardizes not only his own reelection but also Republican control of Congress.

Public outrage over the killings has changed the terms of debate. It forced President Donald Trump to, in his own words,“de-escalate a little bit” and created space for Senate Republicans to engage Democratic arguments for restrictions on the heavily armed agents as a condition for funding the agency for the balance of the year. 

And what was the response from House Democrats to these signals of possible Republican accommodation?

To dismiss them as acts of political desperation, demand the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and threaten to close down the government until Trump fires his immigration consiglieri and deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, and calls off his nationwide deportation drive.  

Never mind that Democrats, as the minority party, are limited in their ability to drive an impeachment process in the House, and have virtually zero chance of getting two-thirds of the Senate to remove her from office.

Never mind that forcing yet another government shutdown would be disastrous.

And never mind that even if they succeed in forcing immigration agents to shed their balaclavas, wear body cameras and obtain judicial warrants before barging into people’s homes, those and other similar restrictions will do little to solve the underlying problem that brought on this crisis in the first place: What to do with the estimated 12 million to 14 million unauthorized immigrants living and working in the country. 

What’s been happening in Minnesota is just a sneak preview of the civil war that threatens to engulf the whole country. 

You can certainly blame Trump, Miller and Noem for kicking things off.  But the real blame lies with the members of Congress whose refusal to do their jobs on immigration, as with so many other issues, has created the conditions for political conflagration.  

The excuse that many members offer for their failure is to blame the voters, by which they mean the highly partisan and ideological primary voters who would deny them reelection if they were to vote for the kind of compromise required to resolve difficult issues.

But now that Republicans have overplayed their hand, Democrats have an opportunity to turn the immigration issue to their advantage, not simply by curbing the abusive tactics of ICE agents but, more significantly, by offering a long-term fix for immigration that Republicans like Lawler could support and that wide swaths of the electorate would cheer.

They could start by giving Trump the credit he deserves for securing the border, along with a promise for tightening up on asylum standards and clearing up the case backlog. 

Then Democrats could go on to make a credible case for legalizing those who are here without authorization and increasing the number of legal immigrants each year that the economy desperately needs. Swing voters—in particular, Hispanic and Asian voters who voted Republican in recent elections — would likely find the arguments compelling and the bipartisanship refreshing. 

By offering a credible, positive alternative to Trump’s divisive, out-of-control nativism, Democrats could polish their badly tarnished brand and emerge from the next election not only with a House majority but a strong mandate for comprehensive reform. 

Or Democrats could follow the Republican playbook of fearmongering, outrage and legislative hostage-taking that in the end will only reduce their chances of winning the next election and ensure that, even if they do win, it will come without a governing mandate. 

So which will it be — yet another round of political gamesmanship, brinkmanship and score-settling or a shot at productive governing?

The early signals are hardly encouraging. 

On a conference call Sunday night, the majority of House Democrats were hot to reject the compromise hammered out with Trump by their Senate colleagues, both because it didn’t go far enough and because they weren’t let in on the discussion.

And while they failed to stop the compromise from squeaking through the House by the slimmest of margins, their insistence on turning this into a partisan test of wills is almost certain to poison any serious discussion about fixing an immigration system whose failure is tearing the country apart right before our eyes. 

At this moment of Republican vulnerability, what would be the political downside for Democrats of putting a credible immigration plan on the table?  If something comes of it, it would be a win for both parties, but Democrats in particular. And if Republicans reject it out of hand, the political hole they’re already in will only get deeper. 

Outrage, resistance and revenge are great for stoking the base but they are a lousy formula for governing. 

Steven Pearlstein is the director of the Fixing Congress Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania. He was a longtime writer and columnist for The Washington Post. He is also Robinson Professor of Public Affairs at George Mason University. The views expressed here are his own.