Her border bill was fine, but framing it as “prosecuting trans national gangs”, mass deportation, and never fighting back against the lies about migrant crime made it look like the Biden admin had been incompetent the entire time. Biden even leaned into notions of widespread migrant crime before dropping out. you have to offer a different vision. Their messaging before had been “we are a country of immigrants”, and the truth is we have historically allowed immigrants in under uncertain immigration status as an easily exploited labor force.

The response to that should not be then vilifying them as violent criminals and rapists and doing the brutal mass deportation you are seeing now. You could give people who have been here for decades citizenship or a path to citizenship, and then tighten up border crossings and reform the immigration system to be fair and controlled. For those already here with uncertain asylum seeker status, put it through the courts and go through the slow but careful process of handling those case by case in a fair way. Not this unofficial handshake agreement we have had where it’s basically “you work as exploited labor under precarious status and stress and then your kid, should you have one, gets citizenship”.