The Trump administration believes it can abandon the mass deportation effort, but still deliver wins elsewhere. This is all but impossible.
On Tuesday afternoon, the White House issued a statement on X outlining a deal with Minnesota officials that drives a knife into the back of everyone who showed up to the polls to deliver President Trump a historic victory in 2024. The post explains that the policy going forward will be to target “criminal illegal aliens,” thereby seemingly abandoning the administration’s promise to conduct mass deportations of as many illegal aliens as possible.
Putting aside the fact that this capitulation is a giant victory for Democrats that rewards their violent, treasonous interference with the enforcement of immigration law, this new strategy comes with an even greater consequence for the future of the Republic. The Republican Party, including Trump himself, seems to be in the throes of a terrible delusion in believing they can abandon the mass deportation effort, but still deliver wins elsewhere. This is all but impossible.
As I wrote here, immigration determines the outcome of every other issue. Between 1965 and 2025, there were 15 presidential elections, and in only one of those elections did a non-white demographic vote as a majority for the Republican candidate. Abandoning mass deportations will set into motion the final stages of the demographic transformation of the American electorate, something Democrats have bragged about for decades. If the issue you hold dearest is the Second Amendment, crime, energy, abortion, DEI, health care, religious liberty, or the economy — realize that a loss on deportations will make such concerns meaningless. Those issues are subordinate to immigration.
To put this into perspective, consider that both the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections were decided by less than 100,000 votes in key swing states. Even if illegal aliens never become voters themselves, birthright citizenship guarantees millions of new voters for the Democratic Party. Unless there is a miraculous change in demographic voting patterns, this will enshrine the left’s permanent demographic majority that will soon make it impossible for a Republican to win a presidential election, and shortly thereafter, winning a Senate or House seat in a tossup district will also become a relic of the past for Republicans.