Durbin's run at Judiciary Committee focused on immigration, judges

WASHINGTON — The retiring Sen. Richard J. Durbin has been a mainstay on the Judiciary Committee, where the Illinois Democrat became a leading voice on immigration and criminal justice issues and ushered President Joe Biden’s judicial picks through the confirmation process.

He served on Judiciary for more than two decades and got a chance to be chairman in 2021, after the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California stepped aside amid calls for a more aggressive or partisan approach in the wake of the first Trump administration.

During his four years running the committee, Durbin highlighted a need to tackle gun violence, improve online safety for children and press for other issues he advocated on during his time in the Senate. He remains the top Democrat on the panel this Congress.

Over the course of his career, Durbin played a leading role in shaping Democratic immigration policy, Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council posted on social media.

“Durbin retiring will fundamentally reshape how immigration is debated in the Senate,” Reichlin-Melnick said. “Now with him gone, new leaders will have to emerge.”

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., the current ranking member on the Senate Environment and Public Works panel, is the most senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee after Durbin and considered a top contender to replace him.

Since 2001, Durbin was a champion for young undocumented immigrants who were taken into the United States at a young age and grew up in the country. They became known as “Dreamers” after the legislation he and the late Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch filed called the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act, or DREAM Act.

He reintroduced the legislation multiple times in subsequent decades, including in 2023 with bipartisan support from Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. During a hearing that year, Durbin recalled how he first introduced the legislation after the hearing a story of Tereza Lee, whom he said learned she was undocumented when she filled out an application to go to the Manhattan Conservatory of Music.

“I started to speak in Illinois and on the Senate floor about the challenges these young Americans face,” Durbin said. “Their stories stay with us, because we see ourselves reflected in them. Many Dreamers would approach and whisper to me, ‘Senator, I’m one of those children you were talking about.’”

“More than two decades later, Dreamers are not whispering anymore,” Durbin said.

In the waning days of the Democratic majority in the Senate during the previous Congress, Durbin held a hearing on the potential consequences of the immigration policy the incoming Trump administration was proposing. Among those who testified was Foday Turay, an assistant district attorney at the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, who is among the “Dreamer” immigrants.

Durbin’s record in Congress also included efforts to overhaul the immigration system more broadly. In 2013, he was among the senators, called the “Gang of Eight,” who drafted a comprehensive immigration package. The measure would have offered a path to citizenship for “Dreamers” and would have provided legal status to the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States.

The Senate passed the legislation by a vote of 68-32, but the legislation went nowhere in the Republican-controlled House. Comprehensive immigration legislation has not advanced as far in Congress since.

Biden judges

Throughout the Biden administration, Durbin led the Judiciary Committee as the panel shepherded through the president’s nominees for district and circuit court positions. Durbin, like other Democrats, also backed the Biden administration’s push to bring more demographic and professional diversity to the federal bench.

Senate Democrats notched 235 lifetime judicial confirmations during the Biden administration, edging out the first Trump administration by one. Democrats reached the marker after navigating a series of challenges, including senator absences, finite floor time and slim working majorities throughout Biden’s presidency.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, at a press conference last year, underscored Durbin’s work. “Just about every Tuesday at our lunch, he would get up and remind us how important it was to get these judges done,” Schumer said, adding that the Illinois Democrat was a “pleasant, happy, broken record on this issue.”

Durbin also led the committee as it advanced Biden’s highest-profile nominee, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who became the first Black woman and first former public defender on the Supreme Court.

Despite pressure from progressive advocacy groups during the Biden administration, Durbin stood by a Judiciary Committee tradition known as the “blue slip” process that gives senators the ability to, in effect, block judicial nominees for district courts in their home state.

Other issues

For much of his Senate career Durbin advocated to undo harsh sentencing laws he backed in the 1990s, particularly the difference between mandatory minimums for crack and powder cocaine. For more than a decade he held hearings or introduced legislation to reduce mandatory minimums and change federal sentencing laws.

Those efforts came to a head in 2018 when President Donald Trump signed what backers dubbed the “First Step Act,” a measure Durbin pushed alongside Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., then-Judiciary Committee Chair Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah.

The law reduced the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine, created a “safety valve” in federal mandatory minimum sentences and changed how federal prisons treat inmates pending release.

In a floor speech marking the sixth anniversary of the law’s enactment, Durbin argued the law reduced recidivism, reduced prison populations and and helped undo some of the damage from “tough on crime” policies.

“The First Step Act shows we can do more than just tough on crime we can once and for all be smart on crime and achieve accountability without unjust punishment and incarceration,” Durbin said.

In recent years Durbin has also emerged as a leading advocate for legislation to regulate social media companies, citing harms against children, child sexual abuse material and “deepfake” images.

In the last Congress, Durbin held a hearing with social media CEOs on the harms to children and advanced a bill from Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., that would allow victims to sue websites that host child sexual abuse material.

Last year, the Senate passed a bill introduced by Durbin that would allow lawsuits against websites that host “deepfake” pornographic and other images without the consent of the people depicted in them. The bill did not advance in the House.

Rachel Rossi, who previously served as counsel for Durbin, said she saw the senator express firm opposition to first-term Trump judicial nominees, while also working closely with Grassley to advance landmark criminal justice reform.

“He was never really motivated by getting the recognition or getting the praise or power or money, but really just he was motivated by impact and pursuing justice in the best way possible,” Rossi said.