At a July 2024 rally, then-candidate Donald Trump told a crowd of cheering supporters what he’d do on his first day back in office: “We will begin the largest deportation operation in the history of our country.” Days earlier, delegates at the Republican National Convention waved signs that read “Mass Deportations Now.”
Yet in a Sunday interview with CBS News’ 60 Minutes, Trump suggested an amnesty deal may be on the table with Democrats. Reflecting on the loss at the ballot box on Tuesday, Trump told Ross Douthat that his deportation policy might have been “too tough.”
“I think it might be too tough, yeah. And a lotta people would say that it’s great. But a lotta people think it’s too tough,” the president said.
Trump then pointed to frustration that some Americans have because they believe that illegal aliens working in hotels, landscaping, and other jobs should not have been deported and noted there are others who want illegals who have managed to evade the law for “10 or 15 years” to stay. When asked about working with Democrats on it, he said it was “actually doable.”
In short, the president who ran on mass deportations is once again floating amnesty. If his takeaway from Tuesday is that Republicans need to let more illegals stay, somebody ought to show him exit polls.
As bad as Tuesday was for Republicans, voters gave Republicans an edge on immigration, with an NBC News exit poll showing that 43 percent of voters said GOP “is better able to handle immigration” compared to 41 percent who said Democrats. Another poll showed that when asked how important immigration policies were in deciding who to vote for, 73 percent of voters said immigration was a “crucial or a major factor” and among those, Republicans won 51 percent to 47 percent.
Democrats’ own advertising suggests they knew how poorly a campaign against immigration enforcement would play outside their base. An Axios analysis finding that “ICE” was the third-most featured policy topic in Democrat primary ads for 2026 but that when it came to the general election, it was ranked 35th among policy issues talked about in Democrat ads.
But even if the polls showed Trump data that his enforcement policy was a problem to the voters who turned out (Republican turnout was lower than Democrats’, which means oversampling could be likely), Trump still owes Americans the enforcement he promised. Our immigration laws are not something the Republican Party or Trump should trade away after a bad election.
Yet now Trump is toying with backing away from the only thing voters seemingly agree that he and his party got right. While Trump hasn’t laid out what an amnesty deal would look like, Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar’s DIGNIDAD Act gives us a pretty good idea of what some Republicans are already willing to offer.
The DIGNIDAD Act would create a seven-year program for illegal aliens who evaded our laws before Dec. 31, 2020, to get to stay. Illegals with DUI or DWI convictions could stay, while other illegal aliens can have their deportation proceedings halted while applications are pending. Illegal aliens already deported can apply to return to the U.S. if they were deported but would have otherwise been eligible for this amnesty under the provisions of the bill.
Salazar pitched the legislation as a way for Republicans to retain Hispanic support and thereby keep winning elections. Yet eight of the bill’s co-sponsors lost their races anyway, while Salazar’s race is so close it’s going to a recount. Of course the other question that arises is who does Trump think he needs to appease with an amnesty deal?
For years Democrats and the left have waged an assassination prep campaign against Trump that sought to dehumanize and vilify him, desensitizing people to any violence directed toward him. And it worked — Trump has now survived multiple assassination attempts, and the left still calls him a “fascist,” “Hitler,” and a “threat to democracy.” Trump owes the very party that has contributed to his assassination attempts absolutely nothing — least of which is amnesty. He owes his base that delivered him the Oval Office everything — starting with remaining steadfast in his deportation efforts.
But the notion that illegal aliens who violated our sovereignty and social compact should be rewarded simply because they will pay back some taxes or want to work (thus displacing American workers by working for less) is an insult to all Americans. America’s borders and laws are not optional. When Republicans talk about amnesty for persons who have evaded the law longer than others because they’ve been here for a long time and work in regular jobs, the right falls into the left’s trap that empathy must override the rule of law. It’s emotional blackmail.
Republicans should recall how well buying into that emotional blackmail worked out for Republicans when they were seduced by the false promise that amnesty is compassionate. Ronald Reagan’s 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act was sold to Americans as a one-time fix that would give amnesty to 3 million illegal aliens in exchange for long-lasting border security. If there was supposed to be an electoral payoff, consider Reagan’s home state. George H.W. Bush carried California in 1988 and Republicans haven’t carried it since. Reagan’s amnesty didn’t buy Republicans a meaningful advantage there, and if anything, it signaled to Democrats that with enough grandstanding, they could get their way.
In fact, Salazar admitted her legislation is the launchpad of eventual citizenship, and Trump himself understands that any amnesty leads to citizenship and, more crucially, voting. Beto O’Rourke and Rep. Maxwell Frost have already made clear their priorities involve giving illegal aliens a pathway to citizenship.
Trump himself knows this too, saying in a 2013 tweet that “Amnesty is suicide for Republicans. Not one of those 12 million who broke our laws will vote Republican. Obama is laughing at @GOP.”
Perhaps he should heed his own warning.
