With the GOP wipeout in the 2026 midterm elections in the rearview mirror — and the implications of the massive changes the electorate voted for on Tuesday yet to come — the question now becomes how big a role the president’s immigration policies played in the outcome. If pre- and post-election polls are right, immigration was a veritable afterthought for most of those who cast ballots — except for the one key constituency the Republican Party will be relying on to rebuild and move on.
A Quick Look Back at the 2016 Presidential Contest
It is inevitable, as we’re a species that struggled to survive during most of the long evolutionary process, that humans would focus on the here-and-now, rather than on the past, both distant and near. But a quick look back helps explain how the United States got to this point on immigration.
Trump made immigration a cornerstone of his first campaign for president in 2016, and it played a big role in his unlikely victory over his Democrat opponent, former Senator, Secretary of State, and First Lady Hillary Clinton.
Trump joined eight other GOP candidates (Ben Carson, Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.), Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), former Florida governor Jeb Bush, former tech executive Carly Fiorina, Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas), Ohio Gov. John Kasich, and New Jersey governor Chris Christie) on a stage in Las Vegas for the fifth GOP debate in December 2015, and cut right to a point his opponents had quibbled about throughout the night:
Our country is out of control. People are pouring across the southern border. I will build a wall. It will be a great wall. People will not come in unless they come in legally. Drugs will not pour through that wall.
Nine months later, during an August 2016 speech in Phoenix, Trump laid out a more sophisticated framework that would guide most of what would become his immigration policy during his first term.
Among other things, he promised to: “build a great wall along the southern border”; triple the number of immigration officers; offer “zero tolerance for criminal aliens”; “enforce all immigration laws”; “suspend the issuance of visas to any place where adequate screening cannot occur”; and “reform legal immigration to serve the best interests of America and its workers, the forgotten people”.
Once in office, he began constructing infrastructure along the Southwest border (triggering a partial government shutdown over funding in December 2018 that lasted for 35 days); implemented a travel ban for nationals of largely Muslim countries (which led to a legal challenge that went all the way to the Supreme Court before Trump ultimately prevailed); and by the end of FY 2020 deported (by my count) just over 935,000 removable aliens, most of whom (just fewer than 65 percent) has criminal records.
From a historical standpoint, Trump wasn’t that much different from his immediate predecessors (and likely less effective on deportations than President Obama had been), but he struggled to defend his immigration record and largely stopped discussing it by the time he ran for reelection in 2020.
... And at the 2020 Presidential Campaign and Biden Presidency
The victor in that contest, former Vice President Joe Biden, nonetheless used Trump’s immigration policies and rhetoric on the campaign trail, contending — among other things — that the then-incumbent had “waged an unrelenting assault on our values and our history as a nation of immigrants”.
And once in office, Biden and his DHS Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, quickly began throttling ICE’s efforts to deport both criminal and non-criminal aliens, even while implementing policies that left the Southwest border vulnerable to the entry of massive waves of both illegal migrants and drugs.
It took media outlets a couple of years to catch on to both what was occurring at the border and to the implications of Mayorkas’s releases of millions of illegal migrants into the interior, but when big-city Democratic mayors like New York’s Eric Adams began raising alarms, it became difficult for both news outlets and the White House not to take notice.
Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential contest in July 2024, and was replaced by his Vice President, Kamala Harris.
Early on, President Biden placed Harris in charge of addressing the purported “root causes” of illegal immigration, and her efforts were less than successful. But given she was the closest thing Biden had to a “border czar”, she took much of the blame for the chaos that was occurring there.
Her opponent in that contest, Trump, returned to what had been a winning issue for him in 2024, and hammered the Biden-Harris administration over its immigration and border policies during his third campaign.
Trump Redux
As D.C. tipsheet Roll Call reported shortly after Trump’s victory that November, the once and future chief executive was now “in a position to enact his campaign promises on immigration policy, including plans for mass deportations and new efforts to stop migrants from entering the United States”.
Aided by his actual “Border Czar”, Tom Homan, and new CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott, Trump redux quickly brought “operational control” to the Southwest border, which was great for homeland security but also removed what could have been a major talking point for GOP candidates in the 2026 midterm elections.
Instead, the immigration focus fell on what were often ham-handed efforts by Trump II’s first DHS Secretary, Kristi Noem, to address the unauthorized population in the interior of the United States, and ICE arrest and detention operations in Los Angeles, Chicago (“Midway Blitz”), Portland, Ore., and other major cities quickly led to confrontations between federal officers and “protestors”.
Armed attacks on immigration facilities in Johnson County and McAllen, Texas, in July 2025 and a sniper shooting at a Dallas ICE facility two months later heightened the tensions and placed federal officers into a more protective stance, all before ICE’s focus shifted in December 2025 to Minnesota, “Operation Metro Surge”.
Rhetoric ran hot, and even prior to Operation Metro Surge, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) — Harris 2024 presidential running mate — was referring to ICE as “Donald Trump's modern-day Gestapo”, and shortly after it began, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D) contended he had “received reports about a number of scattered incidents in which federal agents were involved in some form of activity” and that “in many cases, those activities are largely built around terrorizing people”.
The deaths of U.S. citizens Renee Good in early January and Alex Pretti 17 days later during immigration operations in Minneapolis quickly turned already negative public attitudes even further against ICE, prompting Trump to send Homan to the Land of 10,000 Lakes by the end of the month, effectively removing immigration enforcement from Noem’s portfolio and leading to the reassignment of her “commander at large”, El Centro Border Patrol Chief Greg Bovino.
That didn’t stop congressional Democrats from refusing to fund DHS, leading to a partial government shutdown for the department that ran from February 14 to April 30.
The April 30 deal excluded ICE and CBP funding, and it wasn’t until June 8 that Congress passed S.2, the “Secure America Act”, which restored appropriations to the two agencies and continued them through FY 2029.
Things briefly quieted down thereafter, only to heat up again after ICE fatal shootings of aliens during enforcement stops in Biddeford, Maine, and Houston, Texas, in July.
Curiously, however, late August polling from Harvard/Harris showed DHS with a +13-point favorability rating (47 percent favorable, 34 percent unfavorable), and although ICE was eight points underwater in that poll (47 percent unfavorable to 39 percent favorable), that was up three points from July polling, and up eight points from January, when it was at -16 points.
Pre-Election Polls
NBC News conducted its last pre-election poll on October 31, and it contained a few responses that are insightful in retrospect.
First, respondents were asked, “If you could send one message with your vote this year so the people who win the election know what you mean with your vote, in a SHORT phrase, what would that message be?”
“More bipartisanship” (24 percent), “Fix The Economy/Reduce The Cost Of Living” (22 percent), and “Honesty/Integrity/Trust Matters” (14 percent) topped the responses, but the 11th most popular answer, between “Anti-Republican/MAGA” (6 percent) and “Listen To Your Constituents” (5 percent), was “Border/Immigration Control” (also 5 percent).
In fact, that was the only immigration-related response listed; there were no “crackdown on ICE” or “expand immigration” answers listed.
Then, there was question 12, “Which ONE of these issues is the MOST important issue facing the country?”, which offered respondents 10 options to choose from.
Notably, the fourth most popular choice, ahead of “the war with Iran” and “jobs and the economy”, was “immigration and border security”, the first option for 10 percent of those polled and a combined choice for 21 percent of respondents.
Finally, there was question 17, “when it comes to each one of the following issues, which party do you think would do a better job— ... the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, or both about the same?”
In reply, 45 percent of respondents said Republicans would do a better job on immigration, compared to 34 percent who preferred Democratic handling, an 11-point edge for the GOP.
Then, there was the latest Harvard/Harris poll, which was conducted between October 24 and 26, and which surveyed 2,700 registered voters.
Trump was underwater on every major issue in that one, but received his best approval rating, 44 percent, on his handling of immigration, tied with the job he is doing “fighting crime in America’s cities”.
Immigration was also the fourth-named “issue most important to” respondents “personally”, the choice of 9 percent of those polled and ahead of “crime” (8 percent) and “artificial intelligence” (4 percent), and beating the “Iran war” (3 percent) by a country mile.
Finally, respondents were given a list of Trump policies and asked whether they favored or opposed each.
The incumbent’s third most popular policy, just below lowering prescription drugs costs and easing diesel fuel costs, was “deporting immigrants who are here illegally and have committed crimes”, which 76 percent of those polled approved of (including 69 percent of Democratic voters) and less than a quarter (24 percent) opposed.
It should be noted, however, that ICE was 12 percentage points in the red on that survey, with half (50 percent) of respondents viewing the agency unfavorably compared to 38 percent of those polled who viewed it favorably.
Exit Poll
Finally, Fox News Media, five other TV news networks, and the Associated Press (AP) collaborated on a new “single source of election polling” during the midterms, with each of the outlets publishing the results as a single exit poll.
Respondents were offered six issues and asked which one “is the most important facing the country”. “Immigration” came in third at 14 percent (after “the economy” at 39 percent and “the state of democracy” at 33 percent), a “most important” issue primarily for Republican voters. In fact, 89 percent of those who named immigration were GOP voters, as opposed to 10 percent who had pulled the lever for Democrats.
Next, pollsters asked respondents how important “immigration enforcement policies” were to them when voting for Congress, and 73 percent stated that it was either a “crucial or a major factor”.
Those respondents were fairly closely divided between Democratic voters (47 percent) and Republican voters (51 percent), but the 27 percent who stated conversely that immigration was either a “minor factor” or not a factor voted overwhelmingly for Democrats, by a 76 percent to 22 percent margin.
Moreover, the 36 percent of respondents who stated immigration was a “crucial factor” largely voted for Republicans as well, by a 15-point margin, 57 percent to 42 percent.
Finally, Republicans were more trusted in that poll to handle immigration compared to Democrats by a small, 43 percent to 41 percent, margin, though notably even 9 percent of Democratic voters preferred GOP handling of the issue (with just 2 percent of Republicans saying the obverse).
Holding the Wolf by the Ears
The Roman Emperor Tiberius and Thomas Jefferson often used a variation of the Latin phrase auribus teneo lupum, “holding a wolf by its ears”, to describe a pressing issue with no easy solutions.
As the foregoing should suggest, nothing better describes the dilemma of how the U.S. government should respond to the estimated 13.5 million aliens unlawfully present here. Enforcement will bring a backlash, but non-enforcement is a political loser, too — and possibly a bigger one.
Up to now, the Trump administration and congressional Republicans have been responsible for coming up with a solution, but when the 120th Congress convenes on January 3, Democrats will join Trump on that hook.
For decades, the answer from both parties has been to do nothing while kvetching about the efforts of and proposals from other side, and don’t be surprised if when the next presidential election rolls around on November 7, 2028, we are still talking about the same issues.
Democrats have traditionally been willing to sacrifice their political interests for their party’s long-term gains, however, and Trump is term-limited under the 22nd Amendment and thus has little to lose.
Consequently, if the Party of Jefferson is willing to set aside calls for revenge from its own lupine wing, it is possible they may come to some “grand compromise” — a mix of “legalization” (i.e., “amnesty”) and reform of a system that now heavily favors family-based migration over the skills immigrants bring.
A Dearth of Lions
That, however, would require not only political courage (a rare commodity at times in Washington) but also a deep knowledge of how immigration actually works, as opposed to how politicians and pundits think it works.
Few in Congress today are as knowledgeable of immigration as the “lions” who once roamed there in the past, like Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), Sen. (and former Attorney General) Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.), and Reps. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), Henry Hyde (R-Ill.), and Peter Rodino (D.-N.J.).
Likely Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is one of the few who remain, but in recent years his role has been more obstruction on immigration than direction. And if the February 2024 bipartisan “Senate border bill” is any guide, the odds that any new proposal will be more harmful than helpful in resolving the immigration mess are high.
Immigration likely played little role in the rough time Republicans had in the 2026 midterms, except to the degree GOP candidates should have highlighted it in their campaigns. Expect advocates to disagree, but the polls don’t bear their positions out.