How to beat Trump on immigration
A surprising game plan emerges
Welcome to a Monday night edition of Progress Report.
If reports tonight are true, it looks as if the United States is debating the abandonment of diplomacy and joining Israel in a war against Iran.
As we wait and watch to see how Trump invariably makes the situation worse, tonight we’re looking at his war on the American people — and how it could be a fatal miscalculation, if Democrats ignore the consultants who have been holding them back.
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Trump’s immigration soft spot
There are a few ways to receive Donald Trump’s latest declaration of war on Democratic-run cities, which he vowed on Sunday night to punish with more ICE raids and military occupation.
First, the language stank of Stephen Miller’s grandiose apocalyptica, so he probably spent a few minutes listening to that bald chimp yammer on earlier in the evening;
Second, Trump was probably really grumpy over the massive turnout for No Kings Day protests, which put his rickety military costume parade to shame;
Third, it adds fuel to the argument that we already live in an autocratic state and some kind of balkanization feels increasingly imminent;
And fourth, short of admitting that he wants to cut Medicaid or that Elon was right about the Epstein files, this may be the most politically foolish thing that Trump could be doing right now.
Not only do snap polling numbers indicate that Trump’s show of force in Los Angeles was deeply unpopular, a deeper recent survey shows that Trump’s broader immigration enforcement regime is increasingly troubling to Americans, especially as they learn more about it.
The poll, conducted by Impact Research on behalf of the progressive group Way to Win, finds that what was Trump’s strongest issue on the campaign trail is becoming a liability now that he’s following through on his promises.
“There's a crack forming between how people feel about Trump's policies on immigration and then how they feel about how that those policies are being enforced,” says Way to Win co-founder Jen Fernandez Ancona. “During the campaign we called it the credulity chasm, where people just didn't believe [deportation of US citizens] would happen. And so now that he is in power, and he is doing those things, we're seeing the effect on the electorate.”
Frustrating, yes, but better late than never. Impact Research’s poll found a six-point gap between how voters in competitive Congressional districts felt about Trump and the GOP’s stated immigration policies (50-49% approve) and the way they are being executed (47-52%). The gap is even larger among independent voters, who disapproved of the execution by ten points.
The second part of the poll drilled further into how voters felt about different enforcement measures and how various political messages might impact their opinions of Trump’s record on immigration. The administration’s refusal to follow the law and the threats to individual liberty resonated most with these swing district voters, indicating that the past five months have been eye-opening.
It all suggests taking a page out of Trump’s rhetorical book and attacking what were his perceived strengths.
“There’s actually an opportunity and a strategic imperative, that if we go on offense, we can shift people's attitudes on this, we can drag down Trump's approval on the immigration issue,” Fernandez Ancona says.
I explored more of the organization’s findings and their implications in my conversation with Fernandez Ancona, pieces of which are below.
There has been a fair number of high-profile and stomach-turning injustices committed by ICE and the administration during these raids, including deportation of children. I’d have thought that those examples would move people the most, but it was concerns about the Constitution and personal liberty that caused the most concern.
I think it's both, because we saw in this poll that people are very, very concerned about those kinds of stories [69% registered disapproval of ICE conducting raids in schools]. The stories provide a good example of what's happening; the stories that raised the most concerns were those involving people who are here legally and abducted, and the ones that are targeting children.
It seems like in these Congressional districts, it's a different audience than the whole country. This poll looks at more competitive Congressional districts and in those places, the messaging that is doing the best talks about how these actions raise larger concerns about enforcement and saying that no one is safe if Trump wants to come after them. Then [messaging about] the fact that he’s ignoring the courts, he's arresting judges, and there’s a constitutional crisis that is undermining our democracy [is working] as well.
There’s some dark irony to the fact that messaging about a constitutional crisis and undermining democracy is now effective.
it was sort of surprising to us that that messaging was doing well here because of exactly that: coming out of the election, it was sort of conventional wisdom that [democracy-related] messaging didn't work. I think some of it was a credulity chasm issue, as well as voters at that time not really understanding the threat. I think it's also true that democracy is an abstract concept, and so it is hard for people to put that in the front of their minds.
It requires serious effort to put this stuff at the front of voters’ minds, especially as the administration throws so much at them. And we saw that Democrats went were proactive on the Abrego Garcia stuff, and Sen. Chris Van Hollen went to El Salvador, it actually sunk Trump’s numbers on the issue… until they mostly went silent again, as instructed by leadership and centrist pundits.
I think we are seeing it happen in real time. Gavin Newsom is not the most popular politician, especially more progressive circles, but people actually responded really well to his speech, which sort of surprised me. It was like, we don't like that he has right-wing people on his podcast, but we really appreciate that he stood up, that he said something, and that it felt authentic and meaningful.
And I think the same thing is true for Alex Padilla. Listening to what Kristi Noem was saying, he just couldn't refrain from saying something. He could have just sat there, and maybe that's what other Democrats would have done in the past, but there was something in him that felt like he had to get up and say something.
We saw the reaction: he’s gotten so much support, that clip has gone so viral. People are sharing and people are wanting to talk about it. That's exactly what happened with Chris Van Hollen, too, when he went to El Salvador.
Democrats, especially the Democrats who stayed at home last election, they want to see Democrats fight Trump. And this issue is no exception.
Whereas some of them just keep calling it a “distraction,” no matter how prominent and horrifying the raids and military assaults on protestors get.
There’s a little bit of a false strategic calculus that says, well, we need to make the conversation about this other thing; we need to just focus on the economy and prices and tariffs. But I think this is the conversation we keep running into, we can't change the reality that we're living in. We can't change what the Trump and the Republicans decide to make the news. So the best that we can do is go on offense, on all of these things, and not try to pretend like we're living in a different world where the only thing we can talk about is the prices of eggs.
Even if Democrats do manage to hurt Trump on this issue, even fewer people trust them on immigration — your poll found them with a net -58 rating, which is incredibly daunting.
Fifty points underwater is just a such a stark reality. This is a hole that we have dug for ourselves over many, many years. And it comes down to not being able to enact positive policy when we had power, to not being on offense and making the case for our point of view for far too long.
We looked at television advertising as a proxy for how people spend money in campaigns, and for the past few cycles, we've seen just a complete asymmetry in terms of Republicans going so hard on the anti-immigrant messaging. Our side often said nothing, which was the case in this last presidential, when there was only a Spanish-language ad campaign.
In the Senate races, where there was more symmetry in the actual spending on the issue, and Democratic ads were almost just as harsh as Republican ads. They were actually messaging on the Republican turf when it comes to immigration. That's a pattern that we have been in for a long time, coupled with lack of policy solutions, that leads to that kind of -50 number.
Our stance on it has been so weak because it's been a capitulation to the other side's turf. Ultimately, we need to be on our own turf and making the case for our own values and beliefs and making a strong argument on offense if we want to dig out of this hole.
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I have been advocating for policy literacy. When people don’t understand current policy, what we want changed, and the best way to change it (they never should have canceled Schoolhouse Rock - remember “I’m Just a Bill?” - I think there is a subset of people in this country who assume the President runs the country).
Like Immigration, discussed here: after years of rhetoric, I actually believed that people just snuck across the border and had kids to force the US to let them stay here. I never heard of the process where they can turn themselves in to authorities, have a credible fear interview and start a process, or that so many were here doing it. I never saw information regarding the high costs of apprehension, incarceration and deportation is so high, or that their increased productivity that they brought to a community was a net financial benefit. It took reading defenses on immigration to know any of this.
Fundamentalist Christians have a very black and white legalistic mindset, and it is easy to reduce any empathy they might have for an immigrant with the kind of rhetoric coming from the Trump administration. A discussion with them should include various Bible passages that support the “alien within our gates,” someone that God’s people are admonished to treat kindly even in Exodus and Deuteronomy when they are reminded of God’s care of them when they wandered in the desert. Between pointing out the legalities there are (and how, why) and pointing to God’s instruction, the biggest argument by anti-immigrant activists falls apart pretty quickly.
Hatred’s biggest fuel is ignorance. Once you find out how human your enemy is, it is hard to pretend they aren’t a person just like you. We need policy summaries on major issues and maybe a free app or something to find them easily. I realize with the internet it feels like reinventing the wheel, but someone with knowledge of those specific laws being able to craft a topic, bold, clear, colorful presentation, might do a lot of good.
"we need to be... making the case for our own values and beliefs"
So what are those 'values and beliefs' with regard to immigration? Let me suggest that one belief should be that the role of employers in attracting undocumented workers here should not be ignored - it should be paramount. No border wall or deportation will ever stop ambitious people from a better life.