Trump's Second Term: What To Expect On Immigration

Donald Trump came to prominence in 2016 by running on a hardline anti-immigration platform. In his initial run, Trump centered a promise to build a wall on the US-Mexican border and emphasized a 10-point-plan to detailing the mechanisms he planned to use to embark on an unprecedented campaign to deport all illegal aliens residing in America. In one September 2016 speech, Trump swore he would order the removal of millions of migrants in his first hour in office.

A week after winning the election, Trump immediately began distancing himself from his own words. In an interview with 60 Minutes as president-elect, Trump reduced the target of his immigration rhetoric to aliens who had committed serious crimes. After four years in office, he wasn’t even able to accomplish this narrowed objective.

As president, Trump’s immigration record was abysmal, effectively deporting fewer criminal aliens than the previous Obama administration, all while inflows of illegal migrant crossings remained steady.

After a year of squawking like an immigration hawk, Trump struck a Reaganite tone once he settled into the White House. In one 2018 episode, Trump offered his hard won political capital as cover for a bipartisan amnesty bill that would potentially legalize millions of illegals, reportedly telling Senator Lindsay Graham, “If you want to take it that further step, I’ll take the heat.”

A year later, as re-election approached, Trump provoked his base into a frenzy by offering the Democrats a DACA extension in exchange for a small amount of funding for the promised border wall his administration and Republican congressmen had been procrastinating on delivering.

Towards the end of Trump’s presidency, Jared Kushner and Trump designed a plan for a “Canadian-style” immigration system that would serve as an alternative to the status quo. Canada’s immigration system, which is effectively a bureaucratically formalized version of open borders, has induced a furious backlash against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who in turn has been forced to embrace measures that turn away foreigners just to maintain national stability.

Voting majorities in all countries in the world consistently vote for fewer immigrants when it is offered. Polls taken earlier this year show that the majority of Americans support mass deportations, and Trump — along with down ballot Republicans — have once again enthusiastically vowed to satisfy this popular demand.

Trump’s 2024 immigration plan, a rehash of his 2016 campaign proposal, would require defying activist federal courts, billionaire donors, and securing tens of billions or hundreds of billions from the purse of a broadly pro-immigration US Congress. In other words, it is a throwaway campaign lie.

Far more likely in a second Trump term is an immigration amnesty akin to Ronald Reagan’s 1986 Simpson-Mazoli Act, which legalized the status of practically all illegal migrants in America in exchange for largely unfulfilled border security concessions.

There is evidence that this was Trump’s plan for his second term all along. Weeks before the 2020 election, the Heritage Foundation released an outline of what Trump’s immigration priorities would be if he were to be re-elected. In it, Lora Ries of the think-tank’s Border Security and Immigration Center confidently forecasted,

“In a second term, President Trump would pursue merit-based immigration reform with Congress, navigate rescinding DACA while negotiating an amnesty with Congress (for anywhere from 800,000 to up to 11 million illegal aliens), and continue to secure the border in the face of strong COVID-economy immigration push factors.”

The political pressures that kept Trump from selling out his base on immigration during his first administration will not exist this time around. Fears of a primary challenge from an anti-immigration candidate to his right or losing a national election are now moot. If currently available exit polls are correct, the paleo-conservative fearmongering of America transforming into a one-party Democrat state has been refuted by Trump’s massive inroads with minority voters during this election cycle, witnessed in his commanding victories in states such as Florida and Texas.

Conservative media outlets that previously held Trump’s feet to the fire, such as Steve Bannon’s Breitbart or Fox News era Tucker Carlson Tonight, are no longer threats. Serious immigration restrictionists such as Ann Coulter, Kris Kobach, Steve King, and Jeff Sessions, who played an enormous role in Trump’s 2016 white identitarian campaign, have been dumped in favor of self-serving opportunists and social liberals such as Elon Musk, RFK Jr, and Joe Rogan, all who either back massively expanding the legal immigration system or support granting illegal aliens a pathway to citizenship.

Republicans are expected to have majorities in both the Senate and possibly the House. In the Senate, the favored candidates to replace Mitch McConnell as majority leaders — Rick Scott, John Thune, and John Cornyn — are among the most pro-amnesty, pro-immigration Republicans in Washington.

If the Republicans hold on to their majority in the House, Mike Johnson is favored to lead for another term. Last summer, Johnson was provided an opportunity to leverage Ukraine aid in exchange for funding towards immigration enforcement, yet he refused, with Trump’s blessing. Yesterday, Laura Ingraham grilled Johnson on his immigration plans, even going so far as to accuse him of plotting an amnesty.

In his debate with Sam Harris, Ben Shapiro — a Never Trumper who is now a Trump insider — confirmed that the president-elect’s mass deportation promise is an empty campaign fib. Illegal aliens have told journalists that they don’t believe Trump will deport them, while Venezuelan border crossers, who have been the subject of controversy throughout the Western Hemisphere in recent years due to their higher levels of criminality, are some of Trump’s biggest supporters, citing his 2021 Deferred Enforced Departure memo that made them impossible to deport.

The incentive structure points to Trump potentially being worse on immigration in his second term compared to his first. The MAGA movement of 2024 is largely an apolitical celebrity cult, granting Trump a free hand to broker an immigration deal a Democratic president could only dream of.