Michigan Dem House candidate claims to be tough on the border —but cheered sanctuary cities

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — In a new ad, Democratic House candidate Curtis Hertel Jr. claims to be tough on the border. But a resurfaced clip of Hertel supporting sanctuary-city policies in Michigan’s capital tells a very different story.

In the spot, the former state senator appears in a T-shirt mowing his lawn. “You wanna know what’s wrong with politics? Egos. Big egos. They wanna look good. But I’d rather do some good,” he says. “And when Democrats were weak on border security, I called them out.”

The advertisement is Hertel’s attempt to win swing voters in Michigan’s hotly contested 7th Congressional District by shifting to the political center on immigration.

Asked when the candidate challenged fellow Democrats, Hertel’s spokesman Sam Kwait-Spitzer told The Post, “He wrote a letter to President Biden calling out his slow response on the border.” 

Hertel sent Biden a letter in May urging him to reimplement Trump-era immigration policies such as “Remain in Mexico,” which required asylum-seekers to wait north of the border while American courts processed their requests.

“It is imperative that both parties collaborate on pragmatic, bipartisan immigration reforms that enhance border security while providing a pathway to citizenship for long-term undocumented immigrants,” Hertel told Biden in the letter.

In endorsing Trump-era policies, veteran Democrat Curtis Hertel is taking a page from Kamala Harris’ book by rebranding himself a centrist.

But Hertel’s Republican opponent, Tom Barrett, who narrowly lost the 2022 race for the district, says he doubts the sincerity of the Dem’s claim to be pragmatic about the border.

“It was done for strictly political purposes to gain or to be able to claim something about the border,” Barrett told The Post. “Because he sees that this is becoming a politically toxic issue for him.”

“Curtis Hertel’s entire history is in stark contrast with some sham claim that he has about standing up to his party on the border,” he added.

Barrett cited Hertel’s 2017 approval of a proposal to make Michigan’s capital a sanctuary city, depriving local police of the authority to ask about a person’s immigration status.

In an on-camera interview, Hertel said of the city’s decision, “I think it’s good. I think it’s fair,” explaining: “Asking people for papers and all those kinds of things can make Lansing an unwelcoming place for people that look different than you or I. So we don’t want that in Lansing. That’s a decision the city council made.”

Asked to clarify, Hertel’s spokesman told The Post, “As Curtis said in that interview, he believes the federal government should ensure ICE has the power to deport undocumented immigrants who commit crimes.”

In the exchange, Hertel went on to defend the city’s decision not to make “federal immigration policy at the local level.” In short, he supported leaving immigration-law enforcement to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, with the city of Lansing renouncing any responsibility to identify illegal immigrants to ICE.

Barrrett said Hertel’s record contradicts his claims of being tough on the border.

“Curtis Hertel won’t do anything to enforce border security, and he’s trying to fool voters” a month “before an election into thinking that he somehow cares about an issue that he has been on the wrong side of for his entire political career as a 22-year-long career politician,” he told The Post.