In her day job as a leader in the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Rep. Veronica Escobar is at odds with President Joe Biden on two signature 2024 issues: She has deep reservations about the Senate border bill he backs and she has called for a cease-fire in Israel’s war in Gaza.

But in this election year, the Texas Democrat also holds one of the most coveted assignments in politics: co-chair of Biden’s reelection campaign.

I stopped by Escobar’s office on the fourth floor of Rayburn to tape this week’s episode of Playbook Deep Dive and to try to understand what it’s like for the El Paso lawmaker to navigate this unusual moment as both a high-profile opponent of key Biden policies and one of his top campaign surrogates.

We talked about her disappointment with Biden’s recent statement about shutting down the border, her concerns about his policies in the Middle East and the potential fallout for his re-election, whether she’d rather Biden run against Nikki Haley or Donald Trump, and the difficult issues that might be on the agenda at the next meeting of Biden’s eight campaign co-chairs.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Let's talk about your role as Biden's reelection co-chair and also the deputy whip of the Progressive Caucus. To me, this is fascinating because there’s some huge tensions between Biden and the progressives over immigration. So let's start with the Senate bill that the man that you're trying to get reelected is very, very strongly backing.

I think what’s important for me in terms of the context is this is a congressional obligation — fixing our country's broken immigration system, reforming outdated laws and policies and processes. It's been a congressional failure for 37 years. The president out of the gate gave us a comprehensive immigration reform bill. I actually helped work on that for then-candidate Joe Biden. He created these unity task forces. Do you remember that?

Yes. Bernie and Biden. Everyone coming together.

I was so privileged and honored to be part of the immigration unity task force.

And that immigration legislation came directly from that process. But that's not the bill Biden is talking about these days, right?

No, it's not. And a lot has changed since then.

What has changed?

When the president gave us that bill, House Democrats were in the majority, and we did not get that bill across the goal line. This is where a lot of my own frustration comes from. We had the power to pass that bill. We had the majority and we didn't do it. So here we have a Democratic president that needs Congress to do its job and we failed.

What were you told at the time by Pelosi and the White House? “Wait for infrastructure, wait for the other priorities to pass?”

Even though I helped shape that bill, I was not a part of the whip team or the team that was in charge of moving it through the House. That job was given to far more seasoned members of Congress and I absolutely deferred to them.

And I think this is so important to understand why I felt I needed to work on a bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill a year later. Part of what I recognized is that our caucus is so diverse. Within our own caucus, there were things everyone found to critique and not be pleased with.

You needed a second Unity Commission.

Or group therapy, one or the other. But it was really at that point when I saw that we couldn't move that bill, that I thought we needed a bipartisan product.

I know you've put out a bipartisan product — we'll talk about that in a second — but that's not even on the table right now. What's on the table is an asylum reform bill, a border security bill with a number of pieces that I don't think anyone believed Joe Biden would support a year or two ago.

Let's start with the politics of this bill. The conventional wisdom is Joe Biden is facing a very difficult reelection. Immigration is a top issue. And the White House political team believes that moving to the right on immigration and passing this bill will help them defeat Donald Trump. Just unpack that political conversation as someone who has a foot in the Biden campaign as a co-chair and has her own strong views on immigration.

This is the toughest domestic policy issue that we are facing today. Without a doubt, congressional inaction for decades has brought us to a moment where the country is sick and tired of inaction on this issue. At the same time, we are seeing mass displacement of people all over the globe. And Congress has used this as a political football for a long time. I can tell you even in El Paso, a community of such goodwill, such a loving community where people open up their wallets and their pantries to provide hospitality for migrants every single day, there's exhaustion and there is this sense that the issue has gotten so bad that something has to happen.

The president, at the same time, has tried various different strategies and at every turn he gets criticized by all sides. Some of my progressive colleagues have been very critical of some of his approaches. Of course, the right has been super critical. And then at the same time, states like mine [Texas] take him to court every time he introduces a new rule or proposes a new strategy. It's a no-win situation for the president. And unfortunately, members of Congress have gotten away........

© Politico