MORNING GLORY: Democrats have just handed Trump the chance to fix immigration
Domestic governance and politics continue even as the world waits for President Trump’s decision on how to best defang the reckless and bloodthirsty regime that holds the Iranian population captive. No one not in the rooms with the president and his inner-most circle of advisers knows what are the options before President Trump or what our intelligence and military say and how our regional allies actually feel. It is "wilderness of mirrors" time on all things Iran.
The president’s resolute actions against Iran and Venezuela in 2025 ought to have earned him enormous credibility on national security decision unlike Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama, who knew only how to retreat. President 45-47 is not the retreating type. He could, of course, disappoint and do nothing about the despots terrorizing Iranians, thereby forfeiting some, if not all, of that accumulated credit from the past year. But no one can render that judgment yet although partisans on the left are eager to class him with the 44th and 46th presidents as appeasers. We have no idea how this crisis will resolve, and likely won’t for weeks, if not months.
In the meantime, the ongoing negotiations over the appropriations bill for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have gifted President Trump an unprecedented opportunity to turn the deep divisions over illegal immigration into a consensus-building breakthrough, one that will put his second term into the history books without equal in post World War II history. A domestic "Nixon-to-China" moment stands before him.
Hard-left Democrats are demanding their congressional members push for the effective neutering of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) by requiring judicial warrants prior to the detention of immigrants in the country without permission—either because they crossed the border illegally as "got-aways," entered with the consent of the Biden administration as asylum or refugee seekers, or overstayed a visa.
GO BIG, THEN GO SMART: TRUMP, ICE AND THE LAW. HOW TO SKIP THE LEFT’S PR TRAP
The Democrats denied that the border could be closed but Trump has shown it can be and has been. Rather than recognize how badly Team Biden broke the immigration system, now the left now wants to deny ICE the long-standing procedures by which illegal immigrants are deported. The Republicans can never agree to this. If the Democrats shutter DHS for six months by denying the entire department funding, it will be an issue for November.
Voters, however, do not like the dragnet approach to illegal immigrants. They are fueled in their discontent by legacy media misrepresenting every case involving a sympathy-evoking migrant and by the tragedies in Minnesota.
It is pretty easy to see what super-majorities want: the rapid deportation of criminals and violent immigrants — including those not yet convicted but arrested for suspected criminal behavior. Easy to see but very difficult to execute.
DEMOCRATS CAN RUN, BUT THEY CAN'T HIDE: AN IMMIGRATION RECKONING IS NEXT IN 2028
Voters are not generally in favor of deporting hardworking migrants who came here and found work. A very loud but small slice of the right wants deportation of 100% of people in the country illegally, but that policy will boomerang in November.
America is a welcoming country, especially for the law-abiding and hard-working. Now is the moment to continue to demonstrate resolve at the border, focus on who must be deported and, crucially, compassion for specific categories of illegal immigrants determined to build a legitimate life here.
President Trump should go on the offensive with the immigration equivalent of The First Step Act success from his first term. The president can demand right now that the final appropriations bill taking shape for DHS to maintain the current deportation process —including administrative warrants for detention— while fully funding the Department of Homeland Security, with some additional sections of new law.
THE SUPREME COURT IS GOING TO GIVE PRESIDENT TRUMP A MAJOR OPENING ON IMMIGRATION
He should flip the messaging script and demand of the Congress that this appropriations bill regularize all "Dreamers" —illegal immigrants brought to the country as minors— as well as other discrete categories of illegal immigrants, such as those who can present a record of work and tax returns for ten years with no arrests, and all illegal immigrants over the age of 50 who do not have an arrest on their records. Immunity from deportation by categories, based on common sense, makes the operational workload of DHS smaller while reducing the political cost of unpopular deportations of low-skilled but dedicated labor that hardly anyone objects to when they are on the receiving end of the services provided by those migrants.
All the Dreamers —which is an "80-20" common sense issue— and other categories of illegal immigrants who should be "regularized," should receive a five year "blue card," a status renewable every five years provided the holder does not violate the criminal law.
The compromise President Trump puts forward should also articulate that there is no path to citizenship for anyone who entered the country illegally and thus the right to vote will never be theirs. This is a bedrock principle as important as the wall along the border: No one should be able to break the law and thereby gain the right to citizenship. Residency on terms of good behavior, yes, but voting and entitlements: No. A hard no.
"Regularization" should not be "amnesty" of the sort President Ronald Reagan delivered in 1986 which proved to be a disaster. A grant of regularization to an individual should explicitly bar that individual from qualifying another person outside the country for favorable status in any application for immigration benefits.
Democrats have unwittingly placed illegal immigrants front and center as the only issue presently impeding the ordinary operations of the government. President Trump should take the spotlight the Democrats have created on DHS funding and turn it on to a demand that cannot be rejected. Trump needs to make the Democrats an offer they cannot refuse.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINION
Most Americans are not eager to eject Dreamers or illegal immigrants who have been here for decades working to build their families and the country. Most Americans are also not sympathetic to the millions who rushed the border during the collapse of border controls during the Biden years.
By taking large numbers of illegal immigrants who arrived long before Biden off the target list for deportation, ICE can focus on the actual problem, which is, in the minds of most Americans, violent and usually criminally violent young men as well as illegal immigrants who arrived in the past five years and immediately imposed enormous costs on the social safety net.
President Trump has proven himself completely capable of managing international crises and legislative achievement at the same time. Even as the crisis continues to unfold in Iran, he should demand that Congress do more than fund the Department of Homeland Security. He should also make the bill providing the funds a first step towards a rational set of rules for the tens of millions of people in the country without any right to be here.
By providing "regularization" for a few million of the tens of millions of illegal immigrants in the country, President Trump will again underscore that he is the president who stands for "common sense." He’s the president who sealed the border. He can also be the one to finally settle the issue of the Dreamers and long-settled immigrants who have been here for decades and decades working and building lives.
Hugh Hewitt is a Fox News contributor and host of "The Hugh Hewitt Show" heard weekday afternoons from 3 PM to 6 PM ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh drives Americans home on the East Coast and to lunch on the West Coast on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable, hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcasting. This column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.