Republican U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani is facing calls to share more details about his family’s immigration journey, and accusations of hypocrisy, from a source close to home: his brother-in-law.
Arizona State University Latin American history professor Alexander Aviña, whose sister Laura is married to Ciscomani, says he used to have a warm relationship with the couple, despite their political differences.
That changed during Ciscomani’s first congressional run, in October 2021, when Ciscomani’s first commercial showed him walking along the southern border, echoing Donald Trump’s calls to finish the wall.
“President Trump had the right approach to border security,” Ciscomani said in the ad. “This administration has left our border completely undefended and made our communities unsafe.”
For Aviña, who says he’s an independent progressive, the endorsement of Trump’s “fear-mongering” rhetoric was shocking — especially because Aviña’s parents, who are Ciscomani’s in-laws, came to the U.S. from Michoacán, Mexico as undocumented immigrants in the 1970s, seeking economic opportunity.
Rep. Juan Ciscomani, R-Ariz.
Aviña recalled texting a screenshot of the ad to his sister, asking, “What is this? You guys are attacking my parents,” he said. “And that was pretty much the last time I heard from them.”
Alexander Aviña, Arizona State University Latin American history professor
Since then, Aviña has gone public with his criticism of Ciscomani, frustrated with the lack of detail of how his family immigrated legally to the U.S., even as their journey has become a centerpiece of Ciscomani’s two congressional campaigns, and a springboard to criticize migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border today, Aviña said.
In a January post on X, formerly Twitter, Aviña re-posted a video of Ciscomani giving a speech at the border, calling Ciscomani an “anti-migrant migrant.”
“Bro, you married the daughter of proud undocumented migrants — my parents,” Aviña wrote.
On Sept. 24, the Arizona Daily Star requested an interview with Ciscomani about how his family legally immigrated in the early 1990s, and about the concerns raised by Aviña.
In a Sept. 30 emailed response, Ciscomani did not acknowledge the request for detail on his immigration pathway, and declined to respond to Aviña’s comments.
“America’s political differences are dividing our country, communities and even families like never before,” Ciscomani said in the statement. “Mine is no different. But I will not exploit a family situation for attention and I will not air our personal or political differences in a public forum.”
Ciscomani has said thanks to a church sponsorship and the help of attorneys, his family moved from Hermosillo, Sonora to Tucson when Ciscomani was 11. They eventually took oaths of citizenship 13 years later, in 2006, which Ciscomani has called “one of the proudest days of my life.”
He’s also said his father worked as a bus driver for “his whole life.”
After the Star pressed Ciscomani for details, his spokesman C.J. Karamargin said in an Oct. 1 emailed statement that Ciscomani’s father worked for a church which sponsored his religious-worker visa. He said Ciscomani’s father later was able to “achieve a work visa and get another job.”
He would not name the church that sponsored the family, nor specify their pathway to citizenship.
“The pastor and his wife have passed away, the church has changed leadership, and they don’t need to be pulled into a political battle,” the statement said. “Anyone suggesting that Juan has been ambiguous regarding his personal immigration story is inaccurate and, frankly, offensive.”
Others argue the congressman has an obligation to answer questions about a story so central to his political identity.
“He absolutely owes the public an answer,” said Republican political consultant Mike Madrid, author of “The Latino Century: How America’s Largest Minority is Transforming Democracy.” “And if he has nothing to hide, he should have no problem.”
Ciscomani, as a young Republican of color, is “the prototype of what the party is trying to become,” said Madrid, who was one of the co-founders of The Lincoln Project, a group of moderate conservatives who oppose Trump.
“The party is becoming more diverse, and it’s doing it on the narrative of the successful, aspirational, middle-class immigrant often,” Madrid said. Someone like Ciscomani who says he went through the proper legal channels exemplifies that narrative, he said.
Considering the centrality of that claim to his campaign, Ciscomani owes the public a clear explanation of how he came to the U.S., he said.
“There’s nothing wrong with making that a part of what his narrative is,” Madrid said. “But it does beg some questions about why there’s this transparency issue. … It’s central to who he is.”
Without full transparency, he loses the credibility and “moral standing” he sought to gain by promoting his immigration story, Madrid said.
Path to citizenship unclear
Immigration lawyers told the Star that gaining permanent status through a religious-worker visa would have required that his father work full-time in a religious position for years. Work as a bus driver, or another support role, for a religious organization could only be a path to temporary status.
After the Star inquired again about his role in the church, on Oct. 3 Ciscomani spokesman Karamargin said Ciscomani’s father worked “in ministry.” He didn’t provide further details on the role, other than saying he was not an ordained minister, and couldn’t say whether that particular visa was the route that led to citizenship.
“Whatever it was, I can tell you it took 13 years for he and his family to achieve citizenship,” Karamargin said, calling the questions “insulting.” “It sounds like you’re saying, ‘Hey, Juan, show me your papers.’”
Aviña said he never heard Ciscomani mention his father working in ministry until now.
Before Ciscomani ran for office, Aviña said he’d sometimes overhear his parents ask Ciscomani how his family came to the U.S., and Ciscomani was careful with his words.
“There’s always been a question about his immigration story internally. We’ve never really gotten a straight answer,” he said.
Aviña’s parents were up front about their irregular journey; their citizenship eventually came through his father’s employer at a horse ranch. They were curious how Ciscomani’s father’s work as a bus driver led to citizenship, Aviña said.
“It was no disrespect to his employment — my mom was a housekeeper, my dad is a gardener,” he said. “But it was very difficult to comprehend how a city bus driver was able to gain a legalization process.”
He said he has his parents’ support in speaking out about his concerns over Ciscomani’s politics, but they declined to comment for this story.
Aviña criticizes what he sees as Ciscomani’s hypocrisy in “criminalizing” people like Ciscomani’s wife’s parents, framing them as dangerous invaders to further his political goals.
“When he attacks refugees, asylum seekers and undocumented migrants, he’s attacking people like my parents, who had a daughter that became his wife, and they have six beautiful kids now,” Aviña said. “He has his family in large part due to the sacrifices and the efforts of my parents, who are quote-unquote, ‘the bad immigrants,’ in his political imagining.”
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson spoke while standing with Republican members of Congress Jan. 3, in Eagle Pass, Texas. Johnson was leading about 60 fellow Republicans in Congress on a visit to the Mexican border. Joining Speaker Johnson in the front row were, from left, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, House Homeland Security Chair Mark Green, R-Tenn., Rep. Juan Ciscomani, R-Ariz., and Rep. Lisa McClain, R-Mich.
Aviña’s sister Laura, whom Ciscomani met when he interned on Capitol Hill in 2003, did not respond to a request for comment.
No “wiggle room”
Applicants for a “R-1” non-immigrant religious-worker visa, for temporary assignments in the U.S., must have been a member of a church of the same denomination as the U.S.-based sponsor for at least two years in their home country.
To get a green card with a religious-worker visa, the requirements are more strict. Among them: Applicants have to demonstrate they entered the U.S. solely to work as a minister or in a religious vocation, immigration attorneys say.
That doesn’t seem to align with Ciscomani’s father’s previously reported work history as life-long a bus driver, said Tucson immigration attorney Maurice Goldman.
“Your job is supposed to be in that (religious) position permanently,” he said. “I see this all the time with people who get stuck in these situations where they cannot leave their job because they have to work in the position they’re being sponsored under. It doesn’t give them any wiggle room.”
Goldman wrote an opinion piece for the Star in 2022, pressing Ciscomani to be more transparent about his immigration history.
In the early 1990s, religious-worker immigrant visas were often issued to those who weren’t technically eligible, and cases of fraud were common, said Charles Kuck, an Atlanta-based immigration attorney who practiced in Arizona for seven years, until 1993.
“There was very little to no oversight,” he said. “This was the wild West.”
Goldman says he’s sympathetic if the family managed to use the religious-worker pathway to immigrate despite not fully qualifying, because the options are so limited and the process so complex.
But, he said, “if somebody did that today, Ciscomani’s party would be saying, ‘Throw that person out, because they’re taking a job from a U.S. worker.’”
After 1994, religious-worker visas became more regulated, and today U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has usually declined to strip earlier immigration benefits from religious-worker visa-holders of questionable eligibility who later tried to become naturalized citizens, likely because it’s difficult to prove ill intent on the part of the non-citizen, said Tucson immigration attorney Jesse Evans-Schroeder.
When it comes to her clients who are dealing with that issue from the same era, “I never had the impression that they willfully deceived the U.S. government. My impression was that this was a visa that was basically being peddled by opportunistic ‘notarios’ (legal document preparers) trying to make a quick buck,” she said in an email.
Ciscomani’s father could have entered the U.S. on a non-immigrant religious-worker visa in a support role, and later another employer could have becomes his route to a green card, said Jessie Schreier, an employment-based immigration attorney. But that’s not clear from the information the campaign has provided so far.
That type of employment-based visa would require the applicant to be “performing work for which qualified workers are not available in the United States,” according to USCIS.
“Like winning the lottery”
Ciscomani says his journey as a Mexican immigrant to U.S. Congress epitomizes the promise of the American Dream.
“No other country in the world would have granted me that opportunity,” he said in an Aug. 29 debate.
It’s a dream that’s out of reach for the vast majority of would-be immigrants today: Less than 1% of people who want to move to the U.S. permanently have a legal pathway to do so, according to an analysis by libertarian think-tank the Cato Institute.
Even those who qualify for narrow eligibility categories face extensive delays due to immigration caps, the Cato Institute’s David J. Bier wrote in a June 2023 analysis.
“Legal immigration is less like waiting in line and more like winning the lottery: it happens, but it is so rare that it is irrational to expect it in any individual case,” Bier said.
In his emailed statement, Ciscomani said he supports improving the legal immigration system.
“The immigration system is outdated, slow, bureaucratic, and expensive,” the statement said. “We must streamline it to meet current demands.”
Aviña said Ciscomani offers Republicans “cover” for their anti-immigrant policies, and the details of his immigration story matter in this context.
“He’s setting up his and his family’s story as the ideal for all immigrants to follow, which in reality is nearly an impossibility, especially now with the way the Biden Administration has de facto ended asylum,” he said, referring to Biden’s June executive order dramatically reducing access to asylum, to the outrage of human-rights advocates.
Ciscomani’s story allows him to “occupy a contradictory space within the GOP,” whose border politics depend on erasing the complexities of the immigration system, said Aviña, a historian whose research focuses on 20th-century Mexico, including revolutionary movements, immigration and the history of narcotics trafficking.
“It’s really effective for the GOP,” he said. “The way Ciscomani portrays it is, ‘These people are a threat to the American dream, but not me. That’s because I’m the good immigrant, I came the right way and therefore, I’m the embodiment or realization of the American dream.’”
Ciscomani’s spokesman Karamargin said in the emailed statement that Ciscomani has never used the phrase “the right way” to describe how his family immigrated.
“Nor has he expressed condescension towards other immigrants,” Karamargin said. “But those who seek to become a citizen of this great nation and go through a rigorous process that includes paperwork, interviews, health exams, reviews, learning English, passing a citizenship test and more, should be treated with respect and grace, not met with stereotypes or profiling.”
Ciscomani says he’s pro-immigrant
In a May campaign email, Ciscomani said millions of illegal border crossings are “no longer an immigration issue. It’s a national security threat. Do we know how many could have been on the terrorist watchlist? No. Do we know how many of them are affiliated with violent gangs like MS-13? No.”
“If you’re terrified by those numbers, you should be,” the email said. “... The American Dream is on the line.”
Aviña said it’s an example of Ciscomani conflating undocumented migrants and asylum seekers with drug traffickers and dangerous criminals, despite study after study showing immigrants commit less crime than native-born Americans.
“He’s representing people like my parents as being threats to American society when they’ve been anything but. They’ve been contributors to the nation,” he said.
Ciscomani, who has endorsed Trump for president, said in the Sept. 30 statement that being pro-border security does not equal being anti-immigrant.
“Actually, being pro-border security is being pro-immigrant, when coupled with a reformed immigration system as it allows for safe entry into our country instead of allowing the cartels to control, operate, and profit off the vulnerable seeking a better life,” the statement said.
Republicans have condemned the Biden administration’s efforts to disempower organized crime groups, which largely control smuggling routes through northern Mexico, by creating new legal pathways for asylum seekers and refugees. That includes the CBP One app for asylum-seekers and a parole program for Haitians, Nicaraguans, Cubans and Venezuelans.
Trump recently promised to deport those admitted under the programs, the Associated Press reported. Republicans say both programs skirt the country’s immigration laws, established by Congress, and allow entry to people who otherwise wouldn’t qualify, the AP said.
The U.S. immigration system hasn’t been reformed since 1990 and the last major effort came under the Obama administration, with the bipartisan “Gang of Eight,” including the late Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona. Their immigration-reform bill died in the GOP-controlled U.S. House in 2014.
Ciscomani didn’t support the bipartisan border-security bill introduced in the Senate early this year, which was endorsed by the Border Patrol union, saying it allowed too many Border Patrol migrant apprehensions before restrictions on asylum access would kick in.
Ciscomani said he would have worked to amend the bill, had it made it to the U.S. House. But the legislation died in February after Trump urged Republican senators to reject it.
Aviña said he wouldn’t be concerned with the congressman’s particular path to citizenship, if it weren’t for how he uses his story politically.
“If his parents do have some sort of story where it turns out they came in ways that weren’t as clean, I don’t care. That’s not the point,” Aviña said. “The point is that he uses this story in a particular way to advance a political agenda that I think is really toxic for the people of the U.S., but also for people coming to the U.S.”
Though Aviña says he feels distanced from his sister and her family, the love between them hasn’t changed, he said.
“I’ve made it clear to her during our limited contact that regardless of politics, we’re here for her, we love her and we support her,” he said.
