As President-elect Donald J. Trump promises to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, Democratic governors are bracing themselves to be on the front lines of an emotional and politically explosive battle against his administration.
Yet unlike eight years ago, when Democrats often vowed to protect immigrants in “sanctuary cities” and resistance to Mr. Trump was a driving political force, the party’s governors are now charting a more careful course.
In interviews, 11 Democratic governors, governors-elect and candidates for the office often expressed defiance toward Mr. Trump’s expected immigration crackdown — but were also strikingly willing to highlight areas of potential cooperation.
Several balanced messages of compassion for struggling migrants with a tough-on-crime tone. They said that they were willing to work with the Trump administration to deport people who had been convicted of serious crimes and that they wanted stricter border control, even as they vowed to defend migrant families and those fleeing violence in their home countries, as well as businesses that rely on immigrant labor.
Describing his posture toward Mr. Trump on issues including immigration, Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey promised to “fight like hell over here” if “our values are unfairly attacked, if communities are unfairly attacked.”
But he added, “And then over here, fight like heck to find common ground.”
This measured approach reflects the political and logistical complexities for Democratic governors as they navigate immigration policy. Most of them have seen rising numbers of migrants strain public services in some of their cities, and have adjusted their tones and policies toward immigration in the eight years since Mr. Trump was first elected.
A Siena College poll of New York State released Tuesday found that 54 percent of voters said the state should support Trump administration efforts to deport migrants living illegally in the state — with just 35 percent opposed.
The governors’ responses also amount to a tacit acknowledgment that Mr. Trump’s election signaled a desire among voters for tougher positions on immigration. Some Democratic governors suggested that his second administration would be more experienced than his first, and was likely to be savvier about how to achieve his policy goals.
Still, the governors warned that Mr. Trump’s broad plans on immigration were dangerous, and they argued that his victory did not mean that voters now rejected humanitarian concerns. They promised to push back on requests to use state detention centers or the National Guard, setting up potential conflicts with the Trump administration.
An impassioned Gov. Gavin Newsom of California suggested that in his state, Mr. Trump’s threats of deportation had already so frightened immigrants that some were skipping lifesaving medical care out of fear of being deported.
Mr. Newsom grew emotional, tears welling and his face turning scarlet.
“I’m going to have the back of those folks every goddamn second of the day,” he said.
But at other points in the interview, Mr. Newsom discussed the complexity of federal versus state immigration authority. He pledged to work to deport violent criminals, said he would not be a blind obstructionist to the Trump administration and reiterated his desire for tighter control of the border.
Other Democratic governors, who spoke with The New York Times last weekend during a gathering of the Democratic Governors Association in Beverly Hills, Calif., adopted similar tones.
Some even proactively highlighted their support for deporting undocumented immigrants convicted of violent crimes — a subject Mr. Trump brought up relentlessly on the campaign trail. That political tactic, which he used in his 2016 and 2020 campaigns and ratcheted up this year, has been criticized as inflammatory but appears to have left Democrats on the defensive.
“If he wants to deal with criminal activity that’s related to the border, I’m a phone call away,” said Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico. “I know he’s got my number. Happy to chat.”
Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York, a state where waves of migrants bused from Texas helped change the politics of immigration, said she wanted undocumented people who are convicted of crimes to complete their sentences before being deported. “I want them to go through our criminal justice because they could go over across the border and be back again the next week without any consequences,” she said.
Exit polls from the November election found that roughly 40 percent of voters supported deporting “most” undocumented immigrants, though a vast majority of those who said so — 87 percent — were Republicans.
Some governors suggested that they would need to work with the Trump administration to keep federal funding flowing to urgent projects in their states.
Mr. Murphy, of New Jersey, said he had invited the president-elect to a ribbon-cutting next year for a bridge paid for with federal money. It was a striking turnaround for a politician who, during his first campaign for governor in 2017, declared that New Jersey would be a “sanctuary state” — a term he said he had not used since he was elected.
Yet Mr. Murphy said he would aim to block Mr. Trump from deporting undocumented immigrants who are in New Jersey and have not been convicted of crimes.
“One thing we won’t do is sell out our values,” Mr. Murphy said. “Just because you’re finding common ground, doesn’t mean that you won’t find the backbone to stand tall on stuff that really matters.”
Agreement with the Trump administration clearly had its limits, with red lines on immigration policy quickly emerging. Nearly all of the governors pledged to use their authority to halt any revival of Mr. Trump’s first-term practice of separating migrant families at the border.
“I will not be part of separating families, rounding up kids in schools, or people who have been here, law abiding, for a long time,” Ms. Hochul said. “We will not be part of that.”
Democrats who are running for governor did little to temper where they would stand.
“Kids in cages — red line for me,” said Representative Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, a Democrat running to replace Mr. Murphy, who is term-limited. “Losing children in the system as sort of a punitive measure for people crossing our southern border — certainly a red line for me. That was really horrible.”
One of her rivals in the Democratic primary race, Representative Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, said that while “it’s one thing to go after criminals,” it was another to “broadly round people up, which I don’t think anyone I know supports.”
Several Democratic governors said any federal attempts to use state resources to conduct mass deportations, or to use state prisons to detain undocumented immigrants who were arrested under new Trump policies, were likely to be rejected.
“It’s not closed fist, but nor is it ‘just tell us what to do and we’ll do it,’” Mr. Newsom said. “And there’s some states that are saying, ‘We’ll coordinate deportation camps, and we’ll turn over police as deportation officers.’ That’s not their job. That’s the federal government’s job, not our job.”
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan said she would be “very reluctant” to commit state law enforcement officers to a mass deportation effort.
In addition to the humanitarian concerns, many governors voiced a worry that targeting immigrants, who are key workers in many important industries, could hurt the economy.
“It would create real economic challenges,” said Governor-elect Josh Stein of North Carolina. “I talk to business folks all the time. We’re a growing state. We’re blessed to be a growing state. Tons of construction happening, and I think it would have real ramifications on the cost of construction, on other forms of labor.”
Ms. Whitmer said, “We have a lot of people that cross the border from Canada into Michigan to provide health care to Michiganders.”
Mr. Trump’s campaign promises on immigration were vast and aggressive, and their sheer scale has left many Democratic governors taking a wait-and-see approach, even as they scramble to prepare for all scenarios.
Ms. Hochul said her team had been told “to look at every executive order that’s on the books, every policy we have, every law that’s on the books to find out what the current status is and where we might need to enhance protections.”
Ms. Lujan Grisham spent minutes exploring different avenues to slow a deportation effort, including guarding data, directing the state police elsewhere, pursuing litigation and applying political pressure.
“New Mexico has more privacy protection than the U.S. Constitution,” Ms. Lujan Grisham said. “So then they have to overturn my Constitution, and then they have to think about overturning all the other states’ constitutions. That’s a lot of stuff.”
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