Americans Can Still Come Together on Immigration. The Compromise We Need.

Illustration by Justin Metz; photograph by David Dee Delgado/Getty Images

About the author: Mark W. Everson helped create the Department of Homeland Security. He was commissioner of internal revenue from 2003 to 2007.

As a candidate, Donald Trump promised to secure the border and remove criminal aliens from U.S. soil. Back in the Oval Office, he has delivered and then some. President Trump should claim his win and strike a broader immigration deal in Congress while it is still possible.

Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas issued a directive in 2021 to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that “the fact an individual is a removable non-citizen should not alone be the basis of an enforcement action against them.” The secretary’s words had an immediate and predictable result: Illegal crossings by migrants surged. All people had to do was make it into the interior and steer clear of the police. Chaos broke out, first at the Southern border and then in cities across the country.

Voters’ dissatisfaction with President Joe Biden’s immigration record was a key factor in Trump’s second electoral victory. But voters can change their minds, and the nation’s mood on immigration is turning.

The window to achieve a sensible solution in Congress is closing. The right compromise can reaffirm our heritage as a nation of immigrants and at the same time assert the right to set standards for those seeking to live in or visit the U.S. It should embrace a few simple principles: U.S. citizens and people who have followed the law for years deserve a better shot in the job market than they are getting now. A compassionate approach to immigration enforcement includes a path to citizenship, but it should only be extended to those who have lived in this country and stuck by our laws for a long period. And treatment of people in this country, illegally or not, should follow constitutional norms.

For the most part, Americans see legal immigration as a good thing. While we don’t favor illegal immigration, there is growing criticism of the government’s approach to deportations. A recent Wall Street Journal poll found 58% of voters don’t agree with the detaining and deporting of immigrants without allowing them to see a judge or have a hearing.

You don’t need polls to know something is changing in the way Americans feel about how our government is handling immigration. I recently saw “ICE IS THE NEW GESTAPO” graffitied in a park in Atlanta. Those kinds of messages are spreading.

That saddens me. I have personal history with ICE. I was deputy commissioner of immigration in the Reagan administration and oversaw implementation of the Immigration Reform & Control Act of 1986, our nation’s last major immigration legislation. Under President George W. Bush, I led transition planning for the border components of the Department of Homeland Security during its creation; my proposal to combine the investigatory functions of the Immigration and Naturalization Service with those of Customs into one interior enforcement agency resulted in ICE.

In today’s administration, some hard-liners may be looking to the Eisenhower administration’s 1954 “Operation Wetback” as inspiration for aggressive removal of the undocumented in workplace sweeps. That program aimed at deporting Mexicans who were illegally in the U.S. It was controversial and quickly curtailed.

The heavy reliance on undocumented workers in agriculture and other industries was an issue then, as it is now. But the U.S. today could not be more different than it was in 1954.

First, the U.S. is now much less white. Its ethnic mix is far more varied, and the percentage of foreign-born is near record highs. Second, U.S. birthrates are declining while skills gaps grow in the workforce, which needs more qualified workers thanks to our world-leading economy.

Third, photos and videos of immigration enforcement now spread instantaneously and ubiquitously online. At some point, those visuals may hurt public approval of deportations.

It has happened before. In 2000, INS officers raided the Miami home of a Cuban family involved in a custody dispute. The Associated Press photograph of a Border Patrol agent pointing a submachine gun at a crying, 6-year-old boy named Elian Gonzalez led to INS officers being branded as “jackbooted thugs.”

Elian Gonzalez is held in a closet as government officials search for the young boy in Miami on April 22, 2000. Photo: Alan Diaz / AP file

The internet is now saturated with imagery. Perhaps that’s why we haven’t had a photo of comparable resonance. But with masked officers conducting raids at a fast tempo, an Elian Gonzalez moment is in the offing.

The administration’s program of mass deportations is increasingly unworkable. A pivot toward more palatable policy could look like this: Maintain but don’t exceed the removal levels for undocumented migrants set during the Obama administration and Trump’s first term. Mandate that employers use E-Verify to substantiate work eligibility for new hires. Secure ratification of a constitutional amendment limiting birthright citizenship to the children of citizens and legal immigrants; then and only then adjust and regularize the status of the millions of law-abiding illegal immigrants who have lived here long term.

The courts are considering the president’s birthright citizenship ban. The Supreme Court may pick up the issue, but the outcome is uncertain and would take time. The time to strike a bargain is now. The president and Congress should make an immigration deal before the midterms start in earnest.

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