Make The Damn Argument!

Democrats Are Abandoning a Winnable Fight Over Immigration

I planned to start this little essay with a juicy example of prominent Democratic politicians and Center-Left Wisemen capitulating to Trump on immigration. But there are too many to choose from!

There’s the Dems voting for the Laken Riley Act (including all Nevada Democrats and both of Nevada Democratic senators)!

There’s James Carville whining that Joe Biden — who literally closed down most of the asylum system — had listened too much to the "idiotic far-left.”

There’s Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego saying that Democrats shouldn’t make a big deal about shipping random people off to a prison in El Salvador without a hearing because that would fall into a Republican “trap.”

Even Bernie Sanders gave Donald Trump a compliment for cracking down on the border. SMH.

It’s morally appalling. When people say that “Mussolini made the trains run on time,” they’re making an observation about the dark appeal of authoritarianism. They’re not calling for a bipartisan effort to find common ground so as to work with a fascist on better mass transportation policy. You’re supposed to know that Mussolini is bad!

I’m old enough to remember when these Dems were warning that Trump was a threat to democracy. Be an actual opposition! But many others have made this point.

I want to make a more narrow case. A specific opportunity is being lost by Democratic elected officials refusing to engage Trump in any debate on immigration, even though that may be Trump’s strongest issue. They are betraying immigrants who — not long ago - these politicians claimed to support more or less. And they are missing a strategic opportunity to turn a Trump strength into a Trump weakness.

To make this point, I want to highlight two pretty consistent findings in recent public opinion polls.

First, in a March 2025 Fox News poll, 63% of respondents said they favor “deporting immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally back to their home countries.” That includes 53% of Hispanics. This is bad. If you want to know why Dems don’t want to loudly oppose Trump on mass deportation, this is why.

But wait. There’s More.

A February 2025 Washington Post/Ipsos poll, asked a more detailed set of questions. They started with: “There are about 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States. Would you support or oppose an effort by the federal government to deport all these undocumented immigrants and send them back to their home countries?” 51 percent said yes. Still a majority, but more than 10 points lower than in the Fox poll. It seems like some minds are changed just by adding the context about how many undocumented immigrants live in America — and maybe the use of less negative labels (“undocumented” v. “illegally”).

But that’s not the interesting part.

The WaPo/Ipsos poll asked about support for deporting specific types of immigrants. When asked about immigrants who had been accused of crimes, majorities supported deportation (62% for nonviolent crimes, 89% for violent crimes). But when asked specifically about immigrants who “have not broken laws in the the United States except for immigration laws” Americans opposed deportation 57-39 percent.

When asked about immigrants who “arrived in the United States as children,” Americans opposed deportation 70-26 percent.

For immigrants who “have lived in the United States for more than 10 years,” opposed 67-30 percent.

And for immigrants who “are parents of children who are U.S. citizens by birth,” opposed 66-30 percent.

Basically, in the WaPo/Ipsos poll Americans supported deporting undocumented immigrants who had committed crimes, or who had been here less than five years. They opposed deporting all others. That should mean that they oppose mass deportation.

What are we to make of these polls?

First, these are not aberrations. Here’s a November 2024 poll showing majority support for letting undocumented immigrants have a pathway to stay in the U.S. legally. And here’s a poll from January 2025 showing majority support for deportation of all undocumented immigrants.

You can’t make this make sense in a literal way. But it shows a few important realitlies. When given context and specificity, voters have nuanced opinions on who should be deported. But they have to be prompted. They have to be asked explicitly about immigrants without criminal records, or immigrants who have lived here a long time. They don’t automatically think of these scenarios when they hear “immigrants here illegally.”

Put another way, the anti-immigrant crowd is winning. They can just say “deport the illegals,” and a majority imagines the kind of immigrant they support deporting. But these poll results also show that the battle for public opinion on deportation is nevertheless winnable. Very winnable, actually.

But people have to make the argument. We have to remind people of the specifics. We have to raise the salience of immigrants with whom the public is sympathetic. This should have been done during the election, when Trump was running on “mass deportation” and Democrats were silent. And should be happening now, but isn’t. The loudest voices who might oppose mass deportation are surrendering the field to Trump.

There’s plenty of material to work with. Data through early March shows that roughly half of the people the Trump Administration has in immigration detention have no criminal record at all. HALF! Stories are mounting of US citizens being detained, people being falsely accused of gang membership and shipped to El Salvador, of whole families being deported while trying to take their child for cancer treatment.

This is not what Americans say they want, when they are asked specifically. But someone has to tell them that this is what is happening.

Prominent Dems right now think the smart move is to wait for public opinion to come to them. I’m sure they think they want to persuade people to vote for them. But they seem to have lost any sense that they have the capacity to persuade a single soul to think differently about an issue, even when there are plenty of signs that the people would be persuadable.

That puts all the burden on advocates with much smaller platforms, all hope in enough stories piling up in the media to begin changing minds, and all the risk on immigrants whose lives will be torn apart. Dems are absolutely right they can’t win on immigration — if they don’t even try. But that problem has a solution.

Get in the fight.