Trump Actually Has an Opening to Do Something Great on Immigration. Hear Me Out.

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Last month, Republican House Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar introduced a new bipartisan immigration reform bill^[2] with a remarkable appeal^[3] to President Donald Trump: “Sir, I believe that you could be for immigration what Lincoln was for slavery and Reagan was for communism.”

That is an unsubtle pitch for an unsubtle historical moment. If it sounds absurd, consider that after Trump signed into law the Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act on July 4, enforcement resources are now guaranteed at stratospheric levels. For decades, immigration hawks insisted that they wanted border security first, before considering any larger deal on immigration. Now, in Trump’s second term, they have it. By their own logic, this political moment ought to present a real window of opportunity for action.

And Salazar’s appeal gets at a familiar political paradox: those who have the most credibility on an issue are most able to defy expectations and reset the underlying terms of a problem. “Only Nixon could go to China^[4],” because Richard Nixon had spent decades in Congress making his name as a rabid anti-communist crusader. If he was willing to deal with Mao Zedong, it must have been because he truly believed doing so was in America’s best interest.

Trump’s record on the border is less substantial, but immigration hawks are nevertheless unstintingly devoted to him as their political leader. He committed to building a wall even when everyone treated this as an unimaginably bigoted folly, and in his second term he is poised to deliver on that promise. Under his leadership, Immigration and Customs Enforcement will grow into the largest federal law enforcement agency, surpassing^[5] the Drug Enforcement Agency and even the FBI. His administration has taken unmistakable glee in its deportations, ridiculing its targets and creating “Alligator Alcatraz” west of Salazar’s Miami-Dade district. If anyone could overcome the mistrust of immigration skeptics, wouldn’t it be Trump? If ever there was a moment to reset policy on some basis more acceptable to them, wouldn’t it be now?

Although there were a few attempts to ask this sort of question in Trump’s first term, notably during a failed legislative push^[6] in 2018, at that time they fell flat. Immigration hawks ultimately voted against^[7] a bill that Trump endorsed, claiming that even as it held out a path to citizenship that might be characterized as amnesty for illegal immigrants, it failed to address their long-standing concerns about security on the southern border or employers brazenly ignoring the law when making new hires.

Essentially, the United States’ immigration debate was stuck in the same rut it had fallen into in the aftermath of the Simpson-Mazzolli Act of 1986^[8]. The promise embedded in that law, painstakingly worked out over many years, seemed equitable: Opponents of unchecked immigration got promises of new protections, while law-abiding workers without legal status were given a path to citizenship. The reality was that greater enforcement never materialized, and illegal immigration soon climbed to new heights.

It is hard to overstate how much the experience of feeling burned by the 1986 law has colored the politics of immigration opponents. Their “won’t get fooled again” attitude led them to sink bipartisan immigration reform efforts time and again. They blocked House consideration of a Senate-passed bill^[9] in 2006 and filibustered a follow-up effort^[10] in 2007. After a “Gang of Eight” bipartisan senators, including Marco Rubio, managed to shepherd a broad compromise^[11] through the Senate in 2013, GOP House leaders again blocked it, declaring^[12], “The American people want our border secured … But they don’t trust a Democratic-controlled Washington.”

President Obama then decided to go around them, using the presidency’s powers of prosecutorial discretion to fashion a new class of semi-legal immigrants with the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. That only deepened the hawks’ suspicion. Over the course of the 2010s, attitudes about immigration became better aligned with partisan affiliation, and skeptics came to think that Democrats nearly all wanted something verging on open borders. The huge wave of migration^[13] that took place during the first three years of the Biden administration cemented that view.

By 2024, the Biden administration realized the need to change course. Faced once again with a GOP-controlled House likely to be skeptical of a 1986-style deal, Democrats attempted to seize the initiative by championing^[14] a security-first deal in Congress. Sens. Chris Murphy (a Democrat), Kyrsten Sinema (an independent), and James Lankford (a Republican) worked in earnest to craft an acceptable deal. Their efforts had little chance of overcoming the basic trust problem or its intersection with presidential politics. Rep. Troy Nehls characterized^[15] Republicans’ position most plainly: “Let me tell you, I’m not willing to do too damn much right now to help a Democrat and to help Joe Biden’s approval rating.” In staking out that position, he anticipated Trump himself, who eventually declared^[16], “Only a fool, or a Radical Left Democrat, would vote for this horrendous Border Bill.”

In his March 2025 address to Congress^[17], again-President Trump returned to the same theme. Taking credit for plunging border crossings since his inauguration, he declared: “The media and our friends in the Democrat party kept saying we needed new legislation, we must have legislation to secure the border. But it turned out that all we really needed was a new President.” That line struck home. Border hawks felt stronger with united Republican government in 2025 than they ever would have felt in a second Biden administration, no matter what law had passed. And yet Trump did not actually insist he could accomplish all he needed through executive action. Pushing for greater border security resources was his administration’s central legislative objective in 2025.

The OBBBA delivered spectacularly. Its border security provisions (Sections 90001-90007) were relatively unpublicized before passage because congressional Republicans were not debating them (unlike Medicaid or the state and local tax deduction). But they are massive, including $46.5 billion for completion of the border wall; $30 billion for ICE expansion; $45 billion to expand detention capacities; and $17.3 billion to support state and local law enforcement border operations. The grand total is a staggering $170 billion^[18] to be expended in the next five years, a transformative investment in America’s capacity to control its borders. The number of ICE agents should nearly triple^[19]; available detention beds should double^[20]; and coordination^[21] between state and local officials and federal immigration authorities will receive more support than ever before.

Critics of an open border demanded a major change, and they got it. Donald Trump now has a chance to return to the broader immigration question that so flustered his predecessors. He may well ignore it, continuing to prioritize fan service. But what would it look like if he did seize the opportunity? And why might that be less far-fetched than it sounds?

Let’s say that the president upset everyone’s expectations and reached out to moderate Democrats to try to make a bipartisan deal. If he could manage the surprising feat and advance legislation popular enough to withstand a filibuster, he could potentially lock in the reconciliation law’s border security gains. If he continued to pursue a GOP-only path, on the other hand, those policy gains would remain politically precarious.

It is not obvious whether Democrats should or would play ball. Given many of their base voters’ fear and loathing of the president, it is certainly simpler for progressives to continue to highlight abuses of the deportation process, denounce the OBBBA as facilitating cruelty, and generally seek to return to the policies of the early Biden administration. Left-leaning immigration groups have, unsurprisingly, staked out^[22] that position, but moderates ought to see that it is obviously politically self-destructive. It would be far shrewder to adapt to the new status quo, accept that their party’s 20212–023 policy was a failure, and try to shape a more humane and sensible immigration strategy that assumes higher levels of border control as a starting point. Sen. Ruben Gallego, whose gaze seems clearly fixed on the 2028 presidential contest, has been the most prominent Democrat pursuing this strategy, peddling his own border security plan before the passage of the OBBBA. Most recently, he is sponsoring^[23] a bill^[24] to expand the “Shadow Wolves” program that enlists members of the Tohono O’odham Nation to help patrol the border. That is a shrewd bit of small ball, but ultimately Democrats need to think big about the opportunities for resetting their party’s immigration stance in the post-OBBBA world.

If Trump and Democrats could find their way to the bargaining table, it’s possible they could fashion a deal that would offer legal status to DACA recipients, whose situation is (and has always been) deeply sympathetic; legally prioritize deportation of criminals; fix the broken asylum process; create channels for payment of back taxes for those who have worked illegally for many years; and ensure that highly skilled immigrants can access American employment and thereby strengthen our economy. Then comes the white whale: an e-verify system enforced on all employers in exchange for some managed amnesty-by-some-other-name.

Most Americans would probably welcome such a deal. Predictably, Americans’ preferences have become^[25] less restrictionist in reaction to Trump’s deportation policies, which most now believe^[26] have gone too far. Approval of Trump’s broader immigration policy has been steadily^[27] falling^[28] for months. Then again, grand bargains would probably have been popular if they passed in 2006, 2013, or 2024, too.

Broad public sentiment isn’t the constraining factor. Immigration hawks’ disposition has been, and the triumphs of the OBBBA have not lessened their intransigence. They have been quick to condemn^[30] Trump’s periodic feints toward a business-friendly policy of benign neglect, and they have been scathing in their denunciation^[31] of Salazar’s Dignity Act, saying that, whatever she may claim, it is indeed primarily an amnesty bill that would create “a racialized helot class^[32].” The ever-nuanced Steve Bannon was even clearer in his message^[33] to “traitorous Republicans” backing the bill: “MASS DEPORTATIONS NOW; AMNESTY NEVER.” Much more importantly, the White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, considered by many to be the most influential^[34] policy thinker in the second Trump administration, seems as devoted as ever to mass deportations and restrictions on foreign entries of all sorts, including international students^[35]. For many in this camp, keeping up the fight is its own reward. For others, heartfelt xenophobia means they are unlikely to change course.

But when Nixon went to China, he faced predictable backlash from the most zealous anti-communists. That did not stop him.

Could anything lead Trump to undertake a similarly politically risky move? His self-stylings as a wheeler-dealer have receded ever since his first impeachment in 2019. A reinvention now would have to be powered by deeper currents. One is his desire to see himself as a Great Man of history. “I alone can fix it” was the promise he made in 2016, and this is the ultimate way for him to show it. Where a Bush or an Obama was helpless to change hearts and minds, Trump would show that he had the power. Closely related to that desire to be the indispensable man is the desire to be recognized as such, not only by his MAGA fans but by those who have forever doubted and slighted him. The president’s fascination with the Nobel Peace Prize is well known, and it seems to genuinely (if inconstantly) motivate him in the diplomatic arena. But that accolade is a mere bauble compared to the legacy he could achieve by defusing this most politically explosive matter. Finally—and who knows how much this really speaks to him—there is the idea that Trump has a special mission from God. In her impassioned appeal to the president, Salazar pursued this religious angle: “President Trump, sir, the same God who saved you from death in Pennsylvania one year ago, and who put you back in the Oval Office against all odds, is the same God almighty who millions and millions are begging to for some type of dignity, not amnesty.” What could be huger than that?

For those of us immersed in America’s political culture of 2025, it is, frankly, hard to take any scenario in which politics stops getting nastier and starts turning toward cross-partisan reconciliation too seriously. The scenario laid out here is thus admittedly unlikely. But Salazar and her allies are to be saluted for trying to keep it alive in our imaginations and for pitching it in terms that could move the president. It would be a genuine jaw-dropper if, years from now, we were all saying, “Only Trump could bring peace to the border wars.” That’s what makes it possible.

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