The Border Debate Is Over. Dems Lost.

Trump is claiming a mandate to terrorize communities and edit the Constitution like a Wikipedia page, while his opponents and critics are trying to regroup.

Birds fly over the Rio Grande in front of the U.S. border wall at sunrise as seen from Cuidad Juárez, Mexico on Sunday, January 19, 2025, the day before President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration. (Anna Watts For The Washington Post via Getty Images)

ONE OF MY FAVORITE nuggets about immigration (yes, I have favorite immigration trivia) is about the timeline for the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

Far from being hallowed American institutions imagined by the Founding Fathers and established by the writ of the Constitution, those agencies are all post-9/11 creations set up during a particularly busy four-month span from 2002 to 2003. Up to that point, their responsibilities had all belonged to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which was disbanded to make way for them.

This infrastructure put in place to protect our homeland from foreign terrorist threats has morphed largely into a set of tools to curb immigration and migration. That’s been especially true with regard to the militarization of the southern border, a mission that appears to be near completion.

This week, President Donald Trump issued a spate of executive orders declaring a national emergency at the southern border in response to an “invasion.” In doing so, he made available 1,500 soldiers for deployment there, with the potential for that number to go as high as 10,000, according to officials.

More interesting than Trump’s actions, however, was the response it engendered from his opposition. Democrats, who have regularly and publicly impugned the ceaseless push for more and more border enforcement—and demanded a pathway to citizenship in exchange for it—said virtually nothing at all.

The conclusion is clear: Democrats have lost the battle over the militarization of the border. Trump’s dystopian vision of the border as a lawless zone that channels hardship, sickness, and violence into the communities of everyday Americans has won out.

If you need further proof, read the interview with Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) in Politico this week, where he explained his vote for the controversial Laken Riley Act. The bill has been maligned on the left as giving law enforcement a free pass to lock up undocumented immigrants and deport them based on petty crimes. But Gallego framed it as legislation aligned with where his constituents and many Latinos are on border enforcement. Its popularity, he noted, was itself a repudiation of the Democratic party’s immigration platform, which had become untenable.

Democrats have taken a position in the past, Gallego said, “that there shouldn’t be limits on people crossing the border, that there shouldn’t be deportations, that there shouldn’t be restrictions for people that are causing problems.”

What do his constituents want?

“They want more Border Patrol, they want more border investments and enforcement . . . and they also want immigration reform,” he said.

Trump has moved quickly to tear the immigration system down to its studs and rebuild it in the image he and Stephen Miller imagine. In addition to militarizing the border, he has immediately targeted birthright citizenship—indicating that he views the U.S. Constitution as more of a set of suggestions he can edit like a Wikipedia page than as a founding document that establishes firm guardrails for government policy.

And though that birthright citizenship executive order was promptly rebuked and put on hold by a federal judge Thursday, the fear among those in the immigrant rights community is that Democrats have conceded huge swaths of ideological turf before even getting the will to fight.

“2025 is not 2017,” a senior Democratic operative told The Bulwark, comparing the first years of Trump’s terms. “The energy to fight back is not at the same level. Something is going to happen to ignite it, but we’re waiting to see what that is.”

When asked if the party had conceded the idea of militarized border enforcement, they responded: “I think you’re on the right track.”

The Democratic party’s acquiescence on the border security debate began well before the November election. Making a last ditch effort to turn around the party’s dismal approval ratings on immigration policy, the Biden White House and Senate Democrats cut a deal with Republicans last year that was heavy on enforcement and reforms to asylum law. Many saw this as clear evidence from Democrats that they were ceding the fight; it was one of the first instances of a major piece of bipartisan immigration legislation failing to include a pathway to citizenship or green cards for some portion of the undocumented population as part of the exchange.

Even then, the bill was scuttled at Trump’s behest. But the debate didn’t reset from there. Now, as Trump tramples over settled law, Democrats are fearful that the Overton window has irrevocably shifted. Instead of debating border enforcement, the party is now bracing for the likelihood of unprecedented interior enforcement measures in American cities.

“As a party, we cannot lose sight of the fact that America is stronger because of immigrants—not despite them. Immigrants build our homes and bridges, help feed us, and they are essential to our economy,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) told The Bulwark. “Trump’s dismantling of our asylum and refugee systems, coupled with indiscriminate mass deportations that decimate our workforce, will only increase costs for every American. We have a challenging road ahead, but we must not give up the fight to thoughtfully reform our immigration system.”

“There are areas where Democrats are going to have to take a stand,” added a House Democrat, who spoke openly about strategy on condition of anonymity. “There’s a sense that when major raids start, there will be a public reaction. If he goes after people with deeper roots than asylum seekers, it will be much tougher for Republicans.”

But simply waiting for Republicans to overreach is not the most confidence-inspiring posture for many Democrats. In some corners, there is an appetite for the party to try to get more aggressive.

The aforementioned House member noted that Democrats could trip up Republicans by going hard at the H1-B visa program, which allows for the hiring of foreign workers in certain specialty occupations. The program has divided Trump’s coalition: Top adviser Elon Musk is in favor of the visas (which he has used to staff his companies), as are others who belong to the tech right. Meanwhile, Steve Bannon gave voice to the nativist right’s opposition to the program by calling it a “scam” of the highest order, arguing that it siphons jobs from American workers, including blacks and Hispanics.

“Musk and oligarchs asking for tech visas leaves a real opening because they’re using these strawberry pickers as a smoke screen while they’re willing to give away our best jobs, the jobs American kids dream of, to foreign workers dependent on them for employment to stay in the country and who they can control,” the Democratic representative said.

But Democrats themselves are divided on H1-B visas, making it harder for the party to use the issue as a wedge against Republicans. And others in the party believe a more forceful defense of immigrants themselves is in order.

Kristian Ramos, who worked for former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and advocated against the Laken Riley Act, said Democrats need to stand up for their values knowing full well that Republicans will always seek to get mileage out of fears about immigrants and the border.

“Republicans are going to keep coming at us with alligators with lasers on their heads, do we just keep saying yes?” Ramos asked. “We have to have actual positions on interior and border enforcement and say what we’re for and what we’re against. During the Obama years we said, ‘Yes, we’re for trade. We also have to keep drugs and cartels and murderers out, but we want to let in legal immigrants who provide for our culture and economic benefit.’ There should be a way those are popular positions for us.”

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AS DEMOCRATS DEBATE HOW BEST to push back against Trump’s immigration policies, they are in agreement that they over-torqued their reaction to his first term. The party responded to his calls to build a wall by embracing—to a degree—concepts like more open borders, sanctuary cities, and defunding ICE. These positions came back to bite them.

Andres Ramirez, a veteran Democratic strategist who was based out of Las Vegas for years, said this time around the party must not adopt a “bombastic and flame-throwing” approach.

Ramirez served as an informal adviser for the Obama administration on legislative efforts to pass comprehensive immigration reform during the former president’s first term. While he’s someone who has never hesitated to toss a Molotov cocktail into the conversation whenever he’s felt Democrats are cooling off on the issue, he cautioned that this moment calls for more thoughtful resistance to Trump than we saw during his first term.

“The same way we criticize Trump for his rhetoric, our rhetoric also hurts us,” he said.

“If we want to move forward, we can’t engage in the same tactics,” he said. “It doesn’t mean capitulate to Republicans—just move differently.”

What Ramirez advocated was fighting Trump on the level of the president’s own “law and order” campaign plank. Ramirez pointed to the 22 states suing Trump over the temporarily halted birthright citizenship executive order as representing a key way forward.

“He’s violating the rule of law, and we should be clear about that,” he said. “It’s not about making this an emotional conversation. When we make things emotional, it hasn’t worked out for us.”

Along those lines, Democrats who spoke to The Bulwark stressed that Trump’s and Miller’s zeal to reduce immigration at the border would actually result in more unlawfulness and chaos.

They pointed to the shutdown of the Biden-era CBP One app, which encouraged migrants with asylum claims to forgo trying to enter the country on their own in favor of signing up for a court appointment. When the Trump administration pulled the plug on the app, Washington Post reporter Arelis Hernández shared a video of migrants crying, devastated by dashed hopes, betrayed trust in the system, and renewed danger and uncertainty. Immigration policy experts warned that the result could be more attempts at disorderly and even illegal crossings—not fewer.

“CPB One is a clear example of Trump screwing people who are trying to do it the right way,” Ramirez added. “This is how Democrats frame it—as ‘If you’re the law-and-order president, then why are you not following through on that?’ The audience is not Donald Trump here. The audience is the five to ten million voters who weren’t sure and changed their preferences in November because Democrats failed to articulate a message.”

One More Thing

Coming soon: Classes or recess interrupted by immigration agents looking for a student. That’s after a Department of Homeland Security order did away with the practice of avoiding immigration enforcement in “sensitive” areas like schools.

In response, the School Superintendents Association flagged a 1982 Supreme Court decision, Plyler v. Doe, which said states cannot constitutionally deny students a free public education based on their immigration status.

Meanwhile, school officials in places like Illinois are being more forceful. Illinois Federation of Teachers President Dan Montgomery called it a “sad and shameful day when schools, meant to educate and support students, are turned into sites of fear and chaos.”