President Donald Trump’s hard-line immigration messaging powered his two White House victories, but his efforts to use the issue as a wedge in the midterms fell flat and the fallout is resonating quickly.
Democrats, Republicans and Trump himself were positioning themselves Wednesday for a shift in the immigration debate after voters issued a resounding rebuke of the president’s second term.
The president opened the door to a bipartisan accord on one of the nation’s most divisive policy matters, potential GOP presidential contenders offered their thoughts on how enforcement might be done differently and Democrats focused their messaging around accountability.
Here are five takeaways on what could come next:
Trump floats a deal with Democrats
Trump phoned in to Fox News late Tuesday to reassure demoralized supporters that he would remain a strong check, through his veto powers, on an emboldened Democratic Congress next term.
But then, unprompted, he suggested there are areas in which he might be willing to collaborate with his rivals.
“We can work with them on immigration, I think,” Trump said.
Legislators in both parties have spent years trying to pass comprehensive bipartisan reform, and Trump himself urged Republicans in 2024 not to strike a dealon border policy changes as he ran for president. His policies have focused on closing the border, restricting asylum and carrying out his promised mass deportation campaign.
But Trump has at times signaled a willingness to negotiate — suggesting in his first term, for example, that he was supportive of offering a path to permanent legal status for undocumented migrants who entered the country as children.
The hard-line MAGA base was predictably frosty to any inkling that Trump would entertain a deal that grants legal status to undocumented immigrants.
“The American people do NOT want amnesty,” Eric Daugherty, a right-wing news influencer, wrote on X in response to Trump’s Fox News appearance.
But Mark Krikorian, executive director at the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for stricter immigration controls, said he would potentially support legalization for a modest number of immigrants in exchange for a permanent end to some immigration programs, such as temporary protected status for people fleeing violent or unsafe conditions in foreign countries.
“If it’s a targeted, smaller thing, then it becomes easier to sell than if you have amnesty for 10 million people,” Krikorian said.
Democrats prepare to investigate DHS, ICE
Democrats seemed in no rush to begin negotiating with the White House over immigration. Rather, their focus quickly turned to hauling Trump administration officials in front of congressional oversight hearings, including Homeland Secretary Markwayne Mullin.
“@SecMullinDHS clear your calendar,” the Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee, where Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Mississippi) will take over as chairman in January, wrote on X.
Committee members have eyed using their subpoena power to investigate ICE’s aggressive enforcement tactics and the financial deals and conditions at the burgeoning number of federal immigration detention facilities. At the same time, however, Democrats will have limited ability to rein in ICE, given that the Republican-led Congress authorized record funding levels for the agency through 2029.
“I don’t see any big change in immigration enforcement under this administration,” said David Bier, an immigration analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute. Given Trump’s lame duck status and the GOP’s loss of congressional control, the political imperative for the White House to make wholesale changes is low, Bier said.
“They are committed to it,” he said of Trump’s mass deportation agenda. “They’re not running for reelection, so they’re going to be unchained even more so. I do not see how that environment produces more moderate immigration policies.”
Vance suggests a ‘change’ in priorities
One senior administration official did hint at a potential shift in immigration policy. In a lengthy election postmortem Wednesday, Vice President JD Vance suggested the administration could “change” its enforcement priorities “by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor.”
Prominent MAGA figures have promoted workplace enforcement as the next frontier in the mass deportation campaign, but the White House has been reluctant to endorse such tactics amid fierce pushback from the business community.
Krikorian, who supports such efforts, said the administration could have a secondary advantage of “undermining the Democrats’ coming message on immigration that is all fascistic.”
“If they do perp walks with some employers and they do what I call ‘briefcase enforcement’ rather than ‘body-armor’ enforcement, they do audits every six months of the whole industry,” he said. “That’s not super telegenic, but it’s likely to be way more effective.”
But business groups quickly cited the election outcome as a repudiation of the president’s mass deportation campaign. The American Business Immigration Coalition on Wednesday called on Congress to pass legislation to protect “long-term immigrant workers, Dreamers, and farmworkers,” and to halt “indiscriminate enforcement actions that disrupt workforce, strain supply chains, and exacerbate inflation.”
Potential 2028 GOP candidates test messaging
Vance wasn’t the only top Republican with eyes on a potential White House bid in 2028 who was testing an immigration-related message this week. Two-term Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, once considered a leading GOP presidential contender in the last cycle, said Tuesday that Trump’s choice of Kristi L. Noem in 2025 to lead the Department of Homeland Security was a “mistake.” Trump fired Noem last spring.
DeSantis criticized Noem’s use of large-scale immigration raids in major cities as more theatrical than effective.
“She wanted these conflicts because it created news, it created conflict. That’s not the way you do it,” DeSantis said while appearing on the Straight Shooter with Stephen A. Smith podcast. He then contrasted the approach with his own immigration enforcement efforts in Florida, where the state has increased cooperation with federal authorities, which he said “works in a more seamless fashion.”
“When you’re looking at ′28, there’s going to be things Republicans want to emulate with President Trump, and things the public wants a different direction on,” DeSantis said. “Then how do you thread that needle?”
Hispanic voters flex their political muscle
Hispanic voters shifted toward Trump in significant numbers in 2024. But they revolted on Tuesday, helping power Democrats to stunning wins in the U.S. Senate and governor races in Texas, a state long dominated by Republicans. Nationally, in counties where most voting-age citizens are Latino, voters shifted about 25 points toward Democratic Senate candidates.
The fast-growing voting bloc will again play a crucial role in 2028 and both parties will likely be mindful of responding to their concerns, including on immigration.
“This was a clear repudiation of Trump’s agenda,” said Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of America’s Voice, a pro-immigration group. “I just want to underscore how significant it is that we have such a big rejection from a majority of voters, but specifically of Latino voters.”
Cárdenas said she does not expect the administration to soften its approach to enforcement, and she does not buy the idea that Trump would pursue a deal with Democrats. She said Democrats must be creative on finding ways to hold the administration to account for the excesses of its enforcement agenda while also offering an affirmative vision of how the country can successfully manage the immigration system.
“This is a very complex issue, but I think we don’t give voters the credit they deserve,” she said. “What they want is a combination of, yes, border control, but they’re also super supportive of a path to citizenship, particularly for people who have been here a long time. I think that is solid ground for them.”
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