Trump is bordering on a solution to illegal migration

Donald Trump has made a mass deportation promise. He has a mandate on the border and to deport criminals. Any more than that could get ugly fast.

Donald Trump speaks at the US-Mexico border on August 22, 2024, south of Sierra Vista, Arizona. Picture: Getty Images.

Donald Trump won a second term in the White House by pledging to secure the US-­Mexico border, and that includes sending a clear deterrent message to migrants before he’s sworn in again on January 20. Last week, a caravan of about 3000 people set out towards the US from near the Guatemala border, according to Reuters, but many of them dispersed after Trump’s victory.

Tom Homan has agreed to be Trump’s new border czar. Media leaks on Monday said Stephen Miller, who advised Trump on immigration policy in the first term, is likely to be White House deputy chief of staff for policy.

In short order, Trump will move to reinstate the border policies of his first term, such as ­Remain in Mexico, which seemed to work. Under that deal, migrants claiming asylum in the US were sent back to Mexico while their cases were pending, which might take months or more.

The idea was to break the incentives to game the system. Given the backlog of asylum cases, letting migrants into the US while they wait is an enticement to come.

The political rub may be Trump’s campaign promise to conduct “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country”. How it goes depends on what Trump means. On Monday on Fox News, Homan said the priority would be “public safety threats and national security threats” as well as migrants who “had due process” and “their federal judge said ‘You must go home’ and they didn’t”.

Good to hear, and add what Homan told 60 Minutes last month. “It’s not going to be a mass sweep of neighbourhoods,” he said. “It’s not going to be building concentration camps. I’ve read it all. It’s ridiculous.”

He said Trump’s plan would involve “targeted arrests” and eventually “worksite enforcement operations”.

Some of Trump’s advisers, including Miller, have talked about mass deportation in sweeping terms but enforcement priorities are up to the president-elect, and Trump has suggested he isn’t interested in deporting illegal grandmothers.

The public backs him on securing the border and reducing the burden that migrants have put on cities across the country. Yet as Trump appears to realise, support will ebb if the public sees crying children while their parents are deported, or reads stories of long-settled families broken up and “dreamers” brought here illegally as children deported to countries they don’t remember.

Even as Joe Biden’s failures turned the public against immigration, Gallup this summer said 81 per cent of Americans want a path to citizenship for those “brought to the US illegally as children”. That included 64 per cent of Republicans.

Trump can do much on immigration by executive action, but a durable solution needs legislation. Maybe Democrats, after the electoral haymaker they got last week, will be willing to compromise more than they have in the past. Trump missed a chance for a bipartisan deal in 2018 to permanently change the border incentives on asylum and more.

He’ll have a narrow window again next year, if he’s willing and has the heart.