Foster cites lying politicians as top issue; challenger Evans says it’s immigration

Democratic U.S. Rep. Bill Foster of Naperville believes the most important issue of his reelection campaign is the threat to democracy posed by politicians who say things they know aren’t true.

Foster’s Republican challenger in Illinois’ 11th Congressional District, Jerry Evans of Warrenville, said immigration is the election’s top issue.

Foster and Evans discussed these topics and more with the Daily Herald during a one-hour, joint interview over Zoom. The entire conversation can be viewed at dailyherald.com.

The interview began with the candidates being asked to identify what they see as the most important issue of the race.

Foster, a scientist and former entrepreneur who has served the 11th District since 2013, warned about politicians who lie repeatedly because “they expect that there’ll be political benefit from it.”

In scientific fields, saying something you know isn’t true will end your career, Foster said. But that’s not the case in politics today, he added.

Foster criticized what he said were “blatant untruths” coming from Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump “and those who copy him.” He said the mob that assaulted the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 was “incited by lies.”

He accused Trump of inciting that mob and called Trump’s actions “a fundamental threat to our democracy.”

Evans, a music school owner, said immigrants entering the U.S. illegally at the southern border is his top concern.

“Right now we have an unchecked southern border that’s very, very porous,” said Evans, who also ran for the seat in 2022. “And we do not have a working and legal immigration system.”

Evans said the U.S. must stop allowing migrants to live in communities here while they await court hearings. He supports the continued construction of a barrier along the border and the hiring of more Border Patrol agents.

Lawmakers must find “common-ground solutions” to the immigration problem that can get bipartisan support and become law, he said.

While saying he respects Foster and his years of public service, Evans criticized his opponent’s response to the question.

“I’m running my own race,” Evans said. “If Mr. Foster wants to try to run against someone else, he’s welcome to try doing that. But this is a congressional race, and I really think that we need to be focusing on what matters to the people in our district.”

The conversation then turned to immigration.

Evans broke with Trump’s severe, anti-immigrant stance and said Congress must help Dreamers, the migrants who were brought to the U.S. as children.

“We need to make sure we take care of them and have a path to legalization for them,” he said.

Evans also called for quicker processes for deciding asylum requests and processing legal immigrants. The U.S. doesn’t have the resources for the mass deportations Trump and other Republicans envision, he said.

“We need to focus on compassion,” he said.

Evans said he didn’t like the bipartisan, $118 billion immigration reform bill that was introduced in the Senate earlier this year but collapsed after Trump denounced it.

The proposal “had a number of holes” and wouldn’t have solved the problem, Evans said. As examples, he said the proposal didn’t have enough money for border agents and it wouldn’t have completed a border wall.

Foster agreed the bill wouldn’t have fully resolved the nation’s immigration issues. But it was a compromise that would’ve passed the U.S. House if called for a vote, he said, and he supported it.

Foster called Trump’s border policies “deliberately inhumane,” citing as an example the now-abandoned directive to separate migrant children from their families.

“We created hundreds and probably thousands of orphans,” Foster said.

Foster credited President Joe Biden and Congress for increasing the number of judges for asylum cases. He also said the immigration crisis “is largely solved at this point,” an opinion rejected by many Republicans.

The 11th District encompasses portions of Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry, Will, DeKalb and Boone counties.