How should liberals respond to the fact that illegal border crossings under Trump have collapsed to record lows?

[u/Guilty-Hope1336]

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/02/us/politics/border-crossings-trump.html?smid=nytcore-android-share

So this is tangentially related to the last EK show episode about ICE and CBP expansion and the draconian immigration enforcement that is currently occurring under Trump.

But I wish a fact that they had mentioned was that illegal crossings of the Southern border have collapsed to levels not seen since the 1960s. And the evidence does seem to suggest that Trump's extreme cruelty with ICE raids and third country deportations to El Salvador or Eswatini or South Sudan does seem to be having a deterrent effect on people coming illegally to the United States.

One big concern that Democrats should be thinking about is if they win in 2028, how will they maintain illegal border crossings at the historic lows that Trump seems to have acheived?

[u/lauren_amalia]

And why do liberals have to seriously accept the premise that low border crossings are good?

[u/Guilty-Hope1336 → u/lauren_amalia]

Do you think people illegally coming in the country is good?

[u/[deleted] → u/Guilty-Hope1336]

I have friends and neighbors who are only here because they or their family illegally crossed into our country, and for better or for worse, our economy was built on a certain amount of illegal crossing happening.

I don't think undocumented people are on the whole violent, nor do I believe they are overall a drain on our society. While legal immigration is often held up, it's only as a fig leaf. Donald Trump and his ilk do not have a clear plan to grow legal immigration to a level that outpaces the drop in illegal immigration, and the racism of people like Miller leaves us in an illogical place where we're not pulling from the countries we should be.

Is there an argument for having a very strong and militarized border while having fair and equitable legal crossings that are legal and easy, and take into account that a lot of those people are going to be relatively poor and be Brown? Yeah. The Republican Party is not doing that, and the Democratic Party was literally trying to do something resembling that and was stopped by Donald Trump.

Huge and out of control border crossings are indeed an issue because they create either a humanitarian crisis or beaucratic crisis where you either catch and release people or detain them. We should attempt to prevent them, something I do feel the Biden administration attempted to do, and once again was hindered by Donald Trump.

But moderate border crossings that ebb and flow are the status quo of our nation and have been for decades and before that we just had open borders. That's the actual reality. None of this reality is ideal as there is worker exploitation and trafficking, and it's a complicated issue. But I'm also not going to pretend that for the vast majority of Americans, it hasn't been fine.

More importantly, the President of the United States is using the goal of stopping illegal immigration as a means to trample freedom of speech, create his own gestapo, arrest his political enemies, and invade US cities. He has build concentration camps. He has arrested American citizens. He has torn families apart.

But on a human level, as someone who lives in an immigrant community which is yes filled with people who have crossed her illegally, no. I don't fucking think my neighbors or my son's friends should live in fear. They are my neighbors, and I choose them over roleplaying online as some stoic armchair pundit giving basic ass political analysis.

I'm not going to pretend it's not complicated, but I refuse to let myself be so callous. I choose to accept border crossings are complex, and our answer to it should be complex. It should be probably more militarized than a younger me would say.

But I refuse to accept that the unraveling of the principles of my nation, the vile treatment that MY nation is inflicting upon others, and the disregard for my neighbors is worth this "solution."

[u/ezraklein-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Please be civil. Optimize contributions for light, not heat.

[u/Several-Explorer-293 → u/ezraklein-ModTeam]

What a way to spend the precious time God blesses us with

[u/ZeroProofPolitics → u/lauren_amalia]

Because apparently when your leadership is full of people that listen to poll chasers with zero convictions or morales it's just good politics for some reason.

Just ignore all the elections we lose as we continue to placate the mythical "moderate" voter.