Will Democrats Ever Learn How to Beat Trump on the Immigration Issue?

Ever since Trump rode down the escalator in 2016 attacking immigrants as drug smugglers and rapists, immigration has been his signature issue, often putting the Democrats on the defensive.

During his first term, however, his cruel policies of separating families at the border and his BS about Mexico paying for the wall contributed to his defeat in 2020. But the Biden administration had no answer for the flood of immigrants who then crossed the border, which Trump used as a cudgel during the 2024 campaign. Once again the issue was Trump’s and in his second term he’s decided to play hardball by, in effect, totally shutting down the border and deporting record numbers of immigrants.

And it was working. While his handling of the economy tanked his poll numbers, immigration enforcement remained strong, until Minneapolis.

There, he overplayed his hand and did not stick to his argument to deport undocumented felons. Instead, he allowed the psychotic Steven Miller to round up undocumented immigrants, non-felons and felons alike, with even some darker-skinned citizens (literally) tossed into the ICE detention centers.

Not only is this a cruel and inhumane policy, but it’s also not what the American people, including the white working-class, want.

For different reasons Trump and the Democrats seem oblivious to the fact that nearly two-thirds of the American people support “granting legal status to all illegal immigrants who have held jobs and paid taxes for at least 3 years and committed no felony crimes.”

Trump doesn’t give a damn about these hard-working immigrants. He’s quite happy to support the MAGA “replacement theory” that calls for the protection of a white America from people of color. For Democrats, a pathway to citizenship is too hot to handle, making them look as if they support “illegals,” even if these undocumented immigrants are not felons. They fear Trump’s cudgel and ignore what the American people want.

According to our YouGov survey of 3,000 voters in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, 63 percent support the “granting legal status” statement and only 37 percent oppose it.

In urban areas in these four states the support is massive:

• Democrats: 91 percent
• Independents: 73 percent
• Republicans: 47 percent

Looking at urban and non-urban areas combined, 36 percent of those who voted for Trump in 2024 supported this path to citizenship. And 81 percent of Hispanic voters supported it.

We also have 2020 data on the support of the white working class throughout the country, which shows that 62 percent supported this same exact “granting legal status” statement, up from 32 percent in 2010.

It’s as if Trump and the Democrats are stuck in 2010 and don’t realize that the working-class has great sympathy for hard working undocumented immigrants, especially in urban areas where day-day contact is greatest. That’s where nearly everyone comes into contact with immigrants who do so much of the hard labor that makes our economy function. Just 20 metro areas account for 60 percent of all undocumented immigrants.

It is politically explosive to send thousands of ICE and border agents into urban areas to randomly round up undocumented workers. Unless you are trying to foment an urban rebellion so you can send in troops to crush it in the name of law and order and cancel the midterms.

What about the dangerous felons?

The Trump administration has deported each month approximately 1,100 undocumented immigrants with prior violent convictions, according the New York Times. I have no doubt that many Americans support their deportation if it is done in a reasonable way. But at the same time Miller’s shock troops have deported 2,100 immigrants with no criminal records per month. Per month!

That’s what happens when thousands of heavily armed mask-wearing troops invade an urban area, stopping people on the street and raiding houses of worship, businesses, and hospitals without court-approved search warrants. That’s not how you catch felons, that’s how you round up undocumented non-felons. That’s how you get away with stopping people based solely on their skin tone, not on any investigative information about criminal activity. And it shouldn’t be surprising that that’s not OK with much of the American people, something Trump slowly is realizing.

Will the Democrats Come to the Defense of Undocumented Workers?

You couldn’t ask for a better political moment given that Miller’s goons have killed two protesters in the last two weeks. This would be the perfect time to demand that ICE be prohibited from conducting any and all random stops throughout the country, and refrain from arresting any undocumented immigrants who have not committed a felony crime. And this is the time to call for a clear path to citizenship for hard working, non-felonious, undocumented workers.

Undocumented workers need political champions, those with enough guts to call for an end to the dual labor market system in which undocumented workers live and work in the shadows and are exploited again and again. That’s not grandstanding. That’s setting a principled agenda for justice and fairness...

But there’s little indication that the Democratic Party is willing to go there. The political calculous is obvious: let Trump overplay his hand and hope the anger against him crests into a massive blue wave flooding the midterms. Why risk supporting a path to citizenship, which only will be thrown back at the Democrats declaring they are weak-kneed on immigration? Stopping Trump, the thinking goes, is more important than grandstanding about paths to citizenship given that the Democrats don’t have the votes to deliver. And besides, undocumented workers can’t vote, angry protestors can and will.

But here are two problems with this strategy. The first is that Trump will adjust the ICE invasions between now and November. He has to realize that rounding up felons requires a different, less visible approach that refrains from random searches and street brawls in urban areas. It should be obvious to Trump that Miller’s masked goons will cost the Republicans the midterms if the shock troops continue to roam the streets. White House border czar Tom Homans already is in Minneapolis saying that the shock troops will stand down, in some way, soon.

The second problem is that undocumented workers need political champions, those with enough guts to call for an end to the dual labor market system in which undocumented workers live and work in the shadows and are exploited again and again. That’s not grandstanding. That’s setting a principled agenda for justice and fairness, something that working people of all shades can connect with.

The anti-ICE protestors are leading the charge with the backing of a few state and local Democrats. But nationally the Democrats seem more comfortable talking about Epstein than protecting terrorized immigrants.

The Democrats may not have the nerve, but Dan Osborn, a working-class independent in Nebraska running for the U.S. Senate sure does. Here’s how he put it:

I believe that undocumented workers, there should be a clear path for them to become documented or become legal status.

We need some meaningful immigration reform. These people are our friends. They’re our neighbors. A lot of them have been here 30 years or more, and I think it’s time they get into Social Security already. There’s 80,000 open jobs in Nebraska that we can’t fill, that we can certainly use immigrant labor for.

Did that kill his chances in his 2024 race? He lost by six points but ran 15 points ahead of Kamala Harris and he’s running again in 2026. He deserves our support.

And, as Bruce Springsteen sings in his a song he wrote last weekend, so do the people who are protecting “the stranger in our midst.”

Oh, our Minneapolis, I hear your voice
Singing through the bloody mist
We'll take our stand for this land
And the stranger in our midst
Here in our home, they killed and roamed
In the winter of '26
We'll remember the names of those who died
On the streets of Minneapolis