While there’s much we don’t yet know with less than two weeks remaining in a tightly contested 2024 election cycle, below are 10 things we do know with confidence about immigration and the 2024 elections.
- Donald Trump is making his closing argument all about immigration lies – and it’s getting more apocalyptic. Don’t just take our word for it – as the Washington Post wrote, Trump is “leaning into a nativist, anti-immigrant message … a closing argument centered on fearmongering, falsehoods and stereotypes about migrants.” Read Politico, “We watched 20 Trump rallies. His racist, anti-immigrant messaging is getting darker.” And via CNN: “Trump has all but staked his presidential campaign on convincing Americans that closing the border and kicking out those who illegally crossed it are the most pressing priorities for the country. It’s a pitch he has delivered with increasingly dark and offensive rhetoric.”
- Trump is running the most vicious anti-immigrant presidential campaign of any major party nominee in modern U.S. history, using xenophobia and racism as the vehicle to seek absolute, fascistic power and not stopping at people who lack legal status or even citizenship. Ugly and aggressive nativism has always been a central part of Trump’s message, but his 2024 campaign crossed a new threshold that is more aligned with fascists than Republicans of the past.From “poisoning the blood” to the sheer volume of anti-immigrant lies and ugliness he spouts at his rallies to his signature policy pledge of unsparing mass deportations, Trump is running the most anti-immigrant campaign in modern presidential campaign history. Key Trump allies who witnessed and carried out some of the most troubling episodes of Trump’s time in the White House, like former Chief of Staff and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, say Trump embraces authoritarianism and speaks admiringly of Adolf Hitler.
- The Republican Party and outside allies are on track to spend more than one billion dollars on anti-immigrant ads and messaging this election cycle. Republican-aligned campaigns are track to spend over a billion dollars on anti-immigrants. As we noted in our report last month, this spend is a massive increase over years past, about three times as much as the record-breaking number in 2022. According to AdImpact, the Republicans’ most aired TV ad was from MAGA Inc which aired 20,000 times in NC, GA and PA accusing Harris of “put[ting] violent illegals, convicted felons back on the streets. The rhetoric in the ads has also gotten exponentially worse, including the adoption of deadly white nationalist and antisemitic conspiracy theories. More specifics and details in this recent analysis from America’s Voice, “Republicans’ Billion-Dollar Bet on Nativism.”
- Despite the GOP’s obsessive anti-immigrant focus, Republican nativism hasn’t been an election winner in recent general elections. Running hard on nativism is not the electoral silver bullet Republicans pretend it is – yes, it motivates core GOP base voters, but their extremism hasn’t worked and has backfired in some races in recent election cycles. See reminders and examples from the 2018, 2020, and 2022 cycles and off-cycle races when immigration was touted as the GOP’s secret sauce – such as the congressional special election in New York earlier this year won by Tom Suozzi.
- Trump, JD Vance, and other Republicans are hiding from the details of their radical mass-deportation agenda. At both presidential debates, Trump refused to answer specific moderator questions about his proposed mass deportations and JD Vance similarly avoided answering in specifics during the VP debate. As HuffPost’s Igor Bobic wrote in, “Republicans Duck Questions About Trump’s Plan For Mass Deportations,” key GOP candidates and elected officials are similarly refusing to engage on specifics. When asked, other Republicans pretend it is just campaign rhetoric. But given the potential consequences for the nation and all Americans, the country deserves to hear specific details – for example, how would the mass roundups, mass detention camps and mass purges work? How would they guarantee that no U.S. citizens get caught in the dragnet? Would Dreamers – with or without DACA – be subject to deportation under a Trump administration?
- Trump promises to deploy the military and a “private red state army” to go after immigrants with and without legal immigration status and also U.S. citizens. The broad Trump definition of “the enemy within” at whom his retribution will be targeted using the “National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military” includes American citizens like Nancy and Paul Pelosi and Adam Schiff, so the notion that roundups and incarceration will only be aimed at non-citizens without legal status is false. Both Vance and Trump have made it clear that TPS holders and DACA recipients will be among those targeted – indicating that Trump will again try to strip them of their legal protections – and that efforts to redefine citizenship and denaturalize American citizens are being explored again. Stephen Miller has been clear that if local jurisdictions do not cooperate, police, state troopers and National Guard from red states will be deputized. By invoking the Alien Enemies Act, last used as the pretext for Japanese Internment during WWII, Trump is essentially promising that citizens and non-citizens will be targeted and due process will be truncated. Protected by nearly unfettered criminal immunity, Trump use of military assets to go after immigrants and other “enemies” is terrifying.
- Trump’s unsparing mass deportation plan is unpopular – when voters learn more details and hear about its impact, the Trump plan rapidly loses public support – which is likely why Trump and Vance and other Republicans have avoided specifics. At both presidential debates, Trump refused to answer specific moderator questions about his proposed mass deportations and JD Vance similarly avoided answering in specifics during the VP debate. As HuffPost’s Igor Bobic wrote in, “Republicans Duck Questions About Trump’s Plan For Mass Deportations,” key GOP candidates and elected officials are similarly refusing to engage on specifics. When asked, other Republicans pretend it is just campaign rhetoric. Trump and GOP allies are refusing to engage on the specific details because they know the specifics are politically toxic and unpopular among key voters. In polling conducted by Professor Tom K. Wong of the US Immigration Policy Center at UC San Diego, support for mass deportation drops from a net positive for Trump to a net negative when basic context is added to the issue. Providing context about the impact of mass deportation on long-term residents, on family separation and the economy moved voters against mass deportation. And see Ron Brownstein’s CNN column here, featuring AV’s Vanessa Cárdenas, which includes the following: “Carlos Odio, a Democratic pollster who focuses on Latino voters, says surveys show that support for mass deportation plummets among not only Latinos but also other voters when ‘people learn that Trump’s plans are to deport [undocumented] people who have been living and working here for decades.’”
- The GOP’s anti-immigrant obsession is directly linked to its anti-democratic push. Republicans’ anti-immigrant obsessions aren’t distinct from their threats to democracy. Instead, they’re “two sides of the same coin,” as Vanessa Cárdenas phrased it in a recent op-ed. For example, the “Big Lie 2.0,” and the myth of non-naturalized immigrants casting ballots in significant numbers purposefully fuels election denialism and is a pretext for both voter restrictions targeted at eligible voters AND a potential 2024 post-election challenge. Read more in this excellent piece in The Guardian by Rachel Leingang and Sam Levine, “Republicans’ non-citizen voting myth sets stage to claim stolen election.”
- American voters still strongly prefer a balanced approach to immigration, both an orderly border AND support for legal immigration/citizenship, instead of Trump style mass deportation and enforcement-only. The American public, including Latino voters and broad majorities of battleground state voters, endorse a balanced approach that pairs an orderly border alongside a pathway to citizenship for immigrant families, instead of a mass deportation-only alternative (see a roundup of polls here). A fresh example comes via new polling from the University of Maryland, Program for Public Consultation (PPC) in six swing states and nationally, which found that when voters are provided a full description of Trump’s proposed mass deportations and related details, they overwhelmingly prefer the details of an earned pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants – by a 58-26% margin nationally.
- The Harris-Walz campaign is embracing an approach that works and has the support of the majority of Americans. They are seeking reforms to our broken immigration system and supporting policies that pair an orderly border with legal pathways and opportunities for long-settled immigrants. While the border/asylum focus has been garnering most of the attention (and includes some restrictive measures we don’t support) their vision also involves support for vitally-needed legal channels and citizenship pathways for long-established immigrants who already live and work here. See the recent speeches from VP Harris in Arizona and Las Vegas for examples (and read the AV take here). Democrats also have coalesced around a strategy of defining contrasts with Trump and Republicans and calling out their preference for immigration politics over solutions – this includes a consistent focus on Trump’s cynical obstruction of the bipartisan, enforcement-heavy Senate bill.
And here is the most undeniable fact: No matter the outcome of the election, we know immigration is essential to the future vitality, competitiveness, and potential of America. Immigration has played a key role in cementing the country’s economic rebound from the pandemic. According to a recent report by the non-partisan National Foundation for American Policy: “immigrants are responsible for the bulk of growth within the U.S. labor market” and “ Immigrant workers will be the only source of U.S. labor force growth in the economy after 2052.” Further, whether in construction, healthcare, or agriculture, immigrants are key to filling labor shortages across various sectors of the economy. Immigrants also continue to be a driver of economic revitalization and innovation whether in Ohio or Idaho. Learn more about the new America’s Voice campaign “Reclaiming Our Story” – a national effort to correct the record and combat nativism by showing how immigrants strengthen our economy, culture, and communities.
