Ten million illegal aliens flowed across the U.S. border during Joe Biden’s four years in the Oval Office. To put that in perspective, that’s roughly 7,000 people entering the U.S. every day.
American frustration over this nearly unchecked mass of humanity coming into the nation helped put President Donald Trump back in the White House. And Trump has not disappointed. He acted quickly to shut down the border, without needing any action from Congress, by simply enforcing existing laws.
In doing so, Trump exposed the Biden administration’s lying excuse for doing next to nothing to stop the mass illegal migration.
However, the secondary, or in truth, primary, problem, thanks to Biden’s border malfeasance, has been the difficult task of finding and sending back home this mass of humanity who illegally entered the U.S. to take advantage of our liberty, prosperity, and welfare.
It has long been the case that people have a much harder time supporting the deportation of people who do not have a legal right to reside here than keeping them from entering in the first place.
This is the conundrum Trump and many Republican lawmakers face.
Exhibit A of this problem is Florida Republican Representative Maria Elvira Salazar. She represents the district that includes Miami, which boasts a majority Hispanic population. In her reelection efforts, she recently dropped an ad that criticizes Trump’s deportation efforts.
In the ad, Salazar states:
Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far. In July, 50% of the 50,000 people that were detained had no criminal record. Be careful what your advisers are telling you about immigration policy. The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today. You can be for immigration what Lincoln was for slavery and Reagan was for communism. I’m not talking about giving them amnesty. I’m talking about giving them a dignified life in this promised land.
Salazar, who first won her seat in 2021, has been a staunch Trump supporter and easily won reelection in 2024; however, she is apparently now feeling political heat from her constituents over deportations.
In a way, this is not surprising. The mainstream media has pressed a false narrative of immigration enforcement as motivated by cruelty, racism, and bigotry. Furthermore, the Leftmedia refuses to properly identify those who illegally reside within the U.S. as illegal aliens, instead using the nebulous term of “undocumented” as if their only problem is that they failed to procure the proper documents.
Recent polling reflects the media’s demonization of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement. According to a Fox News poll, 53% of voters believe that Trump’s immigration enforcement has gone too far. By party, unsurprisingly, 87% of Democrats hold this view, but so do 60% of independents and even 40% of Republicans.
Salazar appears to be reacting to this public sentiment. She may simply be doing what she has to do to win reelection, but this does not bode well for Republican candidates across the country.
The truth is that it has always been difficult for Republicans to fight against this emotionally driven narrative. And too often, as apparently in Salazar’s case, instead of defending what Trump has been doing as the right and proper thing under the law and in service of our national sovereignty, she has caved to the message that immigration enforcement is somehow wrong.
In reality, a leader of a nation who is unwilling to elevate and protect the needs of his own citizens over those of foreigners is, by definition, not a good leader.
Republicans need to refute the false narrative that immigration enforcement is motivated by racism, bigotry, or cruelty, and repeat that it is all about protecting Americans first and foremost.
