By David Ignatius
Democrats have gotten the border issue so wrong, for so long, that it amounts to political malpractice. The latest chapter – in which violent protesters could be helping President Donald Trump create a military confrontation he’s almost begging for as a distraction from his other problems – may prove the most dangerous yet.
When I see activists carrying Mexican flags as they challenge ICE raids in Los Angeles this week, I think of two possibilities: These “protesters” are deliberately working to create visuals that will help Trump, or they are well-meaning but unwise dissenters who are inadvertently accomplishing the same goal.
Democrats’ mistake, over more than a decade, has been to behave as though border enforcement doesn’t matter. Pressured by immigrant rights activists, party leaders too often acted as if maintaining a well-controlled border was somehow morally wrong. Again and again, the short-term political interests of Democratic leaders in responding to a strong faction within the party won out over having a policy that could appeal to the country as a whole.
When red-state voters and elected officials complained that their states were being overwhelmed by uncontrolled immigration over the past decade, Democrats found those protests easy to ignore. They were happening somewhere else. But when red states’ governors pushed migrants toward blue-state cities over the past several years, protests from mayors and governors finally began to register. But still not enough to create coherent Democratic policies, alas.
It’s open season on former president Joe Biden these days, and he doesn’t deserve all the retrospective criticism he’s getting. But on immigration, he was anything but a profile in courage. Security advisers including Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas wanted tougher border policies starting in 2021. But political advisers such as chief of staff Ron Klain, who sought amity with immigration rights progressives in Congress and the party’s base, resisted strong measures. Though Biden was elected as a centrist, he leaned left – and waited until the last months of his presidency to take the strong enforcement measures recommended earlier.
Throughout the 2024 campaign, Trump played shamelessly on public anxieties about the border. Some of his arguments, like claims that hungry migrants were eating pets, were grotesque. They were simply provocations. But Biden and Kamala Harris didn’t have good answers, other than indignation. They had straddled the issue through Biden’s term, talking about border security but failing to enact it, and the public knew it.
Democrats finally came up with a bipartisan border bill in 2024 that would have given the president more authority to expel migrants and deny asylum claims, and more money to secure the border. Republicans, led by Trump, were shameless opportunists in opposing the bill. They didn’t want Biden to have a win. In the end, Democrats didn’t have the votes – or, frankly, the credibility on the issue. Biden took executive action in June 2024, limiting entry into the United States. But it was too late. He could have taken that action in 2021.
Since Trump took office in January, he has been building toward this week’s confrontation in the streets. ICE raids have steadily increased in cities with large migrant populations, as have nationwide quotas for arrests and deportations. Trump declared a national emergency on Inauguration Day that gave him authority to send troops to the border to “assist” in controlling immigration. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem seized every photo opportunity to convey a militarized approach to the coming clash. Over these months, the immigration issue has been a car crash skidding toward us in slow motion.
Since his first term, Trump has clearly wanted a military confrontation with the left over immigration or racial issues. Gen. Mark A. Milley, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, helped talk Trump out of invoking the Insurrection Act in 2020 to contain the unrest that followed the death of George Floyd. But this time, Trump faces no opposition. He is surrounded by yes-men and -women.
The saddest part is that Democrats still have no clear policy. Some blue-state mayors and governors have pledged to provide “sanctuary” for migrants, but they don’t have good arguments to rebut Trump’s claim they’re interfering with the enforcement of federal law. In some cases, sanctuary has meant refusing to hand over undocumented migrants convicted of violent crimes, former DHS officials tell me. That’s wrong. The courts have limited Trump’s most arbitrary policies and his defiance of due process, but not his authority to enforce immigration laws.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) this week chose sensible ground to fight, by filing a lawsuit challenging Trump’s authority to override gubernatorial power by federalizing National Guard troops when there isn’t a “rebellion” or “invasion.” There is no evidence of such extreme danger – or that local law enforcement in Los Angeles can’t handle the problems.
But Newsom’s smart pushback doesn’t get Democrats out of addressing an issue they’ve been ducking for more than a decade: Do they have the courage to enforce the border themselves?
Over the long run, taking border issues seriously means more immigration courts, and more border-control people and facilities – and a fair, legal way of deciding who stays and who goes. But right now, it means Democratic mayors and governors using state and local police to contain protests, so that troops aren’t necessary – and preventing extremists among the activists from fomenting the cataclysm in the streets that some of them seem to want as much as Trump.
Yes, of course, we need new bipartisan legislation to resolve the gut issue of how to protect the “dreamers” and other longtime residents who show every day that they want only to be good citizens. But on the way to that day of sweet reason, Democrats need to oppose violence, by anyone – and to help enforce immigration policies that begin with a recognition that it isn’t immoral to have a border.
David Ignatius writes a twice-a-week foreign affairs column for The Washington Post. His latest novel is “Phantom Orbit.”
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