On Immigration, the GOP Risks Learning the Wrong Lesson

Immigration Here, at least, Trump’s second term has largely been a success. Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images There’s a chance that Republicans will learn the right lessons from the midterm elections. Then there’s Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL). The Florida congresswoman made headlines last month for “breaking” with President Donald Trump on immigration. In fact, many of the headlines contained some variant of this phrase. “Mr. President,” Salazar said in an ad at the time, “some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far.” She blames unnamed advisers, though we can guess whom she’s referring to. Left unmentioned in most of these stories about Salazar’s rebellion (which would have been a much catchier headline) is that she wasn’t totally aligned with Trump on immigration even before Republican electoral fortunes took a turn for the worse. She has long been a proponent of legal status for many, if not most, illegal immigrants already in the country. She takes the Bush-era position that this is not amnesty as long as it is not instant and totally unconditional. This position always polls well in the abstract, until it is demonstrated that the conditions are not as stringent as initially advertised, or that the not-amnesty will not apply to many people, or that it will need to take place in the context of renewed nonchalance about immigration enforcement. If the amnesty signed into law by Ronald Reagan, which was at least generally recognized by its supporters as an amnesty, did not resolve illegal immigration, what hope is there for a surreptitious amnesty backed by his imitators 40 years later? There will be a strong temptation among many Republicans to attribute any losses in the midterm elections exclusively to Trumpian updates to the GOP brand, while ignoring the strong parallels with the party’s loss of its congressional majorities in 2006. If Trump didn’t explicitly promise to forgo new foreign wars to focus on affordability at home, he at least heavily implied this is what he would do if he won the 2024 election. And the record of his first term—at least, prior to the Covid pandemic—made it seem like a reasonable bet that he would prioritize the domestic economy over Mideast adventurism. Whereas Trump did promise tougher immigration enforcement if elected, and largely delivered the same during his first term. That doesn’t mean Trump handled immigration perfectly, then or now. In both his terms, performative enforcement designed to deter illegal immigration often backfired by undercutting popular support for his program. Back then it was “kids in cages,” this time it was the fatal shootings of anti-ICE protesters. Interior enforcement is always going to be a tougher sell to many people than securing the border. There are people in Trump’s orbit, some of them influencers and others who are actually influential, who evince a certain giddiness about the deportations of gardeners and housekeepers that even many Trump voters find distasteful. But border security is never going to be so perfect as to render interior enforcement unnecessary, and there will be powerful incentives for illegal immigration as long as major industries remain so heavily dependent on illegal labor. That’s why some people who are neither violent criminals nor members of foreign terrorist organizations need to be removed simply for violating immigration laws, as long as the number of illegal immigrants remains high. Trump might have moved to a more employer-focused form of enforcement, but this is another area where he has allowed managing his coalition to take precedence over the greater political good. Nevertheless, he did recalibrate on immigration after last winter’s anti-ICE protests, pivoting much more quickly than on Iran and much more effectively than on tariffs (two issues that would have benefited from greater sensitivity to employer bottom lines). Even with these adjustments, Trump has gotten real results when it comes to reducing illegal immigration. The border crisis is the problem Trump has most clearly resolved. He has also controlled legal immigration in ways that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. Subscribe Today Get daily emails in your inbox If Trump had been able to make half as strong an argument for progress on affordability, Republicans would see less of an erosion of Hispanic support. That’s not to say that none of these voters feel the same way about Trump’s immigration enforcement as Salazar does. But the growth in Hispanic support for Republicans came during lockdowns and inflation, not because Trump liberalized his stance on immigration. Democrats saw a reduction in their Hispanic support precisely as immigration became their main way of wooing these voters. Nevertheless, there will be a push among Republicans to backtrack on immigration if Democrats make their expected big congressional gains. Perhaps even Trump would be amenable to what would surely be sold to him as a legacy-enhancing bipartisan immigration deal, as was briefly floated after Democrats took Congress in the 2018 midterm elections during his first term. It is not the most important course correction for Trump’s GOP to make.