Trump’s Coming Immigration Showdown

After Americans overwhelmingly give the White House, Senate, and House (you might as well count the Supreme Court in, too) to one party, which ran with a vow to limit illegal immigration on Day One of its control, what do you do if you’re governor of a liberal state? Why, you ignore the support Trump and the Republicans have and try to work around the coming war on immigration, directly opposing the federal government in Washington. Might as well be 1860 all over again.

“Democrats,” according to the New York Times, “envision flexing their power in these states to partly block the Trump administration’s policies — for example, by refusing to enforce immigration laws.” The Times claims some of the planning in blue states began in 2023 as a potential backstop if Trump won, but the preparations were largely kept quiet to avoid projecting public doubts about Democrats’ ability to win the election. 

The anti-populist Democratic effort will rely on the work of hundreds of lawyers being recruited to combat Trump policies. Advocacy groups are workshopping cases and recruiting potential plaintiffs to challenge expected regulations, laws, and administrative actions. For example, Democracy Forward, a legal group formed after Trump won in 2016, has a multimillion-dollar bank roll and more than 800 lawyers on call.

Governors Gavin Newsom of California and J.B. Pritzker of Illinois are mobilizing their Democratic-controlled legislatures to gird their states’ loins against the future Trump administration. Newsom’s legislature issued a proclamation to “safeguard California values and fundamental rights in the face of an incoming Trump administration…bolstering California legal resources to protect civil rights, reproductive freedom, climate action, and immigrant families.” Pritzker took a more direct stand, stating “You come for my people, you come through me,” apparently referring to migrant families and illegal alien criminals as “his people.” Pritzker and Governor Jared Polis of Colorado have also announced the formation of a bloc called Governors Safeguarding Democracy.

Massachusetts’s Governor Maura Healey vowed to protect the state’s “citizens and residents.” While New York’s mayor has been laid low by ethics charges, Governor Kathy Hochul convened the Empire State Freedom Initiative to combat “threats” from the Trump administration, including on immigration. She and the Trump-hating Attorney General Letitia James vowed to be warriors in the fight to, in Redstate’s words, “stop what the American people just voted for.”

Sanctuary cities and other localities across the U.S. have, since Biden took office, freed more than 22,000 criminal migrants wanted by federal immigration authorities, according to data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE.) The number of criminal aliens freed into the country by sanctuary authorities could potentially be much higher given many times local law enforcement releases criminal migrants before ICE is aware of them and files a detainer notice.

But it is not all bad news. Oklahoma is launching a program, Operation Guardian, to turn over illegal immigrants already in prison to ICE to jump-start Trump’s deportation effort. Governor Kevin Stitt shared with the Washington Examiner plans to expeditiously deport 526 convicted illegal immigrants as soon as Trump takes office. 

“We want to be the first state that works with President Trump,” Stitt said. “Right now, we have over 500 people incarcerated in Oklahoma who have broken the law, who are criminals, and they also are illegal. We would love to get them out of the state of Oklahoma, out of the country.” The state pays $36,000 a day to house them, according to the governor’s office.

Trump is staffing up for the war. In addition to making Stephen Miller deputy chief of staff, Trump is set to install another immigration hardliner in a major White House role: Tom Homan, who will be immigration czar. Homan formerly headed ICE. The two men’s prompt installation in senior White House roles among the first personnel selections for Trump 2.0, says POLITICO, signals immigration enforcement is a “top priority.”

Immigration is a complex affair in the U.S. The immigration legal code is longer and more complex than the tax code. Miller, Homan, and their staffs will need to poke holes in various parts of DHS in general but also look deeper into the bureaucracy. There’s the Department of Labor, which issues work permissions for many visas (such as the H-1B, likely of interest to Elon Musk), the Department of Justice, which runs the immigration courts, and the Department of State, which issues the actual visas themselves abroad. Project 2025 specifically calls out the “Diversity” Immigrant Visa lottery and F and J student visas as in need of an overhaul. “This is the biggest national security vulnerability this nation has seen since 9/11 and we have to fix it,” Homan said.

But initially Trump’s immigration plan will focus on the reported 1.2 million illegal alien criminals loose across the U.S. This population was created by the Biden-Harris administration by allowing migrants to flow across the border without any vetting being done. The plan was especially egregious when dealing with citizens of places like Venezuela, which refuse to cooperate with American law enforcement. Next in line may be military-age Chinese males. All of this targeted enforcement is a far cry from the “mass deportations” feared by the Left.

Trump is serious about all this, beyond personnel choices. Trump confirmed on Truth Social he will declare a national emergency and use military assets to help him carry out his deportation plans. Trump also pledged to continue building the U.S.–Mexico border wall, revive the Remain in Mexico program, hire more border patrol agents, and end birthright citizenship for those born on U.S. soil to illegal migrant parents.

“I’ve got to go back and help because every morning I get up, every morning I’m pissed off about what this [Biden] administration did to the most secure border in my lifetime. So I’m going to go back and do what I can to fix it,” said Homan. 

“I have seen some of these Democratic governors say they are going to stand in the way. They are going to make it hard for us,” he said. “Well, a suggestion. If you are not going to help us, get the hell out of the way. If we can’t get assistance in New York City, we may have to double the number of agents we send to New York City. We are going to do the job. We are going to do the job without you or with you.”

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