After President Donald Trump said he’d work with Democrats on a deal to give some aliens legal status, conservative immigration hawks fear the move will inspire caravans of border crossers.
“You’re rewarding people for illegally entering,” Todd Bensman, former senior advisor to border czar Tom Homan, told the Daily Signal. “The message that it sends to the rest of the world is if you can manage to break through and get in, there’s a pretty good chance that you’re going to be rewarded in a big permanent way, and so people are going to come bum rushing the border over this.”
Bensman said there is a lot of “internal back and forth” in the administration over Trump’s comments. Another source close to the administration said many officials are not happy with the suggestion of a deal on amnesty.
“He’s already getting furious pushback internally, and this isn’t the first time he’s floated that,” Bensman said.
While Trump never used the word amnesty in an interview with CBS News’ Ross Douthat that aired on Sunday’s “60 Minutes,” he said many illegal immigrants who are working stable jobs and paying taxes should be allowed to stay in the United States.
“There’s a large part of the country that think that they should be allowed to stay if they’re good people working in a landscaping company or working in a hotel or doing something right, and in some cases, paying taxes,” Trump said, “and there’s a large group of people think that they should be allowed to stay.”
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Vice President JD Vance said the day after the midterm elections that the Trump administration will never pursue amnesty.
“In the next few months, there’s going to be a lot of gaslighting,” he wrote in an X post. “Expect to hear any number of establishment politicians say the solution to our woes is amnesty. I’m open to the idea that we should change enforcement—by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor, for instance. But anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you.”
On Monday, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters that while “amnesty is never going to be a solution,” he plans to talk to Congress about “where we can look at DACA and figure out a way that these individuals can become legal permanent citizens or something like this.”
Trump’s comment is the definition of amnesty, said Rosemary Jenks, co-founder of the Immigration Accountability Project.
“There is never a reason for amnesty if you want people to respect our laws,” she told the Daily Signal. “So you know the fact that somebody has been here for 10 or 15 years illegally only means that they have been more successful at violating our laws. So why would we reward them for that?”
Jenks said amnesty is not why Americans elected Trump in 2024.
“It’s definitely not where most MAGA people are,” she said, “and it’s definitely not where most Republicans are.”
A White House official reiterated that the president never said the word amnesty.
“There has never been a President stronger on immigration enforcement than President Trump,” the official said. Thanks to his efforts more than 3 million illegal aliens have left the U.S. and we have the most secure border in American history. Like the President has said, he’s willing to work with anyone to improve the lives of Americans and Make America Safe Again.”
“We want Democrats to show their cards,” the official added.
However, “the mere discussion of amnesty encourages more caravans,” said Lora Ries, director of the Heritage Foundation’s border security center and former Department of Homeland Security official.
“Republicans were just trounced from the effects of mass migration for 30+ years that imported Socialism and Islamism,” she said. “Rewarding that and ringing the bell for more of it with amnesty is political and national suicide.”
Bensman thinks the business community is in Trump’s ear urging him to leave their illegal immigrant workforce alone.
“He periodically comes up and says, yeah, hotel workers, got to save them. He postponed the stripping of [Temporary Protective Status] for Salvadorans,” he said.
Jenks said the proposal to give aliens legal status would be “enormously bad for the economy.”
“Anyone who is concerned about deficits and Social Security and Medicare and resources for our own poor would be horrified at this thought,” she said.
Mark Krikorian, president of Center for Immigration Studies, sees no possibility of amnesty actually being passed.
“After the shellacking they took for political reasons, he has to be seen as moving toward the center, and he’s done this kind of thing before,” Krikorian told the Daily Signal. “He kind of tells people what they want to hear when he’s talking to them, and I just don’t see any possibility of this happening.”
“Not because Trump wouldn’t go along with it, but the Democrats would not agree to anything,” he said.
Krikorian said the Democrat immigration platform is too radical for a deal to be made with Republicans.
“There is no way that even the president, however much he wants to sound accommodating, is going to go along with anything like that,” he said.
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