Immigration was President Donald Trump’s second-best issue before the election, and it has proven to be his best issue now that he is in office. By merely enforcing existing law, Trump has delivered the strongest southern border in a generation, and support for deporting illegal immigrants already in the United States has only gone up since he took office.
Elected Democrats have proven incapable of moderating on illegal immigration despite acknowledging it has been a political winner for Trump.
Speaking recently to reporters, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) did say that Trump has been effective at “cracking down on fentanyl, making sure our borders are stronger.” He even added, “I don’t think it’s appropriate for people to be coming across the border illegally.” But then, Sanders said that deporting those “undocumented” immigrants already here would “destroy the entire country” because, without them, no one would “pick the crops in California that feed us.”
“We need a variety of programs,” Sanders continued. “We need guest worker programs” and “comprehensive immigration reform.”
Sanders was not always such a fan of “undocumented” immigrants and guest worker programs. In 2013, Sanders said, “It does not make a lot of sense to me to bring hundreds of thousands of those workers into this country to work for minimum wage and compete with Americans’ kids.” He voted against President George W. Bush’s comprehensive immigration reform plan precisely because it did not guarantee high enough pay for workers in affected industries.
“Our border is very porous,” Sanders said in 2007. “And I think at a time when the middle class is shrinking, the last thing we need is to bring over, in a period of years, millions of people into this country who are prepared to lower wages for American workers.”
If Sanders had run against Trump in 2024, he may have won. Unfortunately for Democrats, by 2020, Sanders did not exist anymore. Somewhere along the way, probably right about the time the nation’s labor movement became dominated by public sector unions, Sanders flipped and became pro-illegal immigration. He was one of the eight candidates who famously raised their hands when asked during the first Democratic presidential primary debate if illegal immigration should be decriminalized.
The mayors of Boston, Chicago, and Denver have similarly failed to learn from their party’s defeat this past November. Summoned to Congress to explain their jurisdictions’ sanctuary city policies, which protect rapists and thieves from deportation, all three mayors defended their refusal to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.
“If you want to make us safe, pass gun reforms. Stop cutting Medicaid. Stop cutting cancer research. Stop cutting funds for veterans. That is what will make our city safe,” Boston Mayor Michelle Wu recently testified to Congress, as if any of those items, most of which have not even happened, would address the very real concern Americans have with the multiple deleterious effects of illegal immigration on our communities.
“You belong here,” Wu told the illegal immigrants in Boston just last week, again explaining her refusal to work with federal law enforcement just days before ICE arrested 370 illegal immigrants in the Boston area, including hundreds of murderers, drug traffickers, and sexual predators.
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“Every human being has the legal right to come to the United States and seek asylum or shelter,” Wu explained last year. This is the Democratic Party’s position on illegal immigration. It is why eight of the party’s presidential candidates raised their hands when asked if they wanted to decriminalize illegal immigration in 2020.
Unfortunately for the Democratic Party, the vast majority of voters don’t believe every person in the world who wants to come here has the right to enter and stay forever as they clog up our courts and undermine American wages. Until Democrats can learn this lesson, they will continue to lose elections.
