Trump supercharged ICE. Now battleground candidates look for a message
WASHINGTON — Since the 2024 election, Democratic congressional candidates have reached a consensus about how to broadly discuss the border — make it secure — but they still lack a cohesive message about ICE.
Some advocate abolishing the agency, while others offer visions for how to rein it in and reform it.
Meanwhile, for Republicans, President Trump’s immigration policies have offered a win on one issue (the border) while creating another issue that many voters find troubling (violence during raids).
Some battleground Republicans are distancing themselves from Trump and have shifted from talking about mass deportations to emphasizing deporting criminals.
Most voters don’t care more about immigration than the cost of living. But it remains an important issue, and for both Republicans and Democrats, the balance in messaging about immigration is delicate, as about half of Americans see the administration’s tactics against immigrants as too aggressive.
As the Nov. 3 midterms approach, Democratic candidates in various states including Illinois, Minnesota and New Jersey have said Immigration and Customs Enforcement should be abolished. In Michigan, progressive Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed has said as much — and taken aim at fellow party members.
“The idea that somehow we can’t say ‘abolish ICE’ because we’re so afraid of what they’re going to say, when we’ve seen ICE terrorize people in our streets,” he said before Michigan’s Senate primary in July. “To me, it is exactly the kind of cowardice that we don’t need from Democrats.”
The Democratic dilemma was crystallized last month when Democratic National Committee members approved dueling messages — one to abolish ICE, the other to reform it.
Among those in the reform camp is Randy Villegas, the political science professor running against Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford) in California’s Central Valley.
Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford), presiding over a congressional subcommittee meeting in Washington on March 6, is seeking reelection in California’s 22nd District.
(Allison Robbert / Ap Photo/allison Robbert)
Villegas is in favor of a pathway to citizenship for longtime immigrants as well as a secure border. He’s called for ending the use of for-profit detention facilities and prosecuting ICE agents who engage in illegal conduct.
It’s a personal issue too. Villegas is the son of immigrants from Mexico, and, according to a 2021 NPR story, his brother is a DACA recipient, granted protection under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. He said the constituents of the mostly rural 22nd District deserve a representative who understands the effects of the broken immigration system; he recalls his mother being unable to visit her sister when she was dying of cancer.
“Kern County was ground zero for these ICE raids last year. What did Valadao do or say about it? Absolutely nothing. This is somebody who likes to pretend they’re a moderate on immigration. He voted to triple ICE’s budget,” Villegas said in an interview, noting that he organized a local workshop with immigration attorneys.
After the raids, led by Customs and Border Protection agents who were reported to have gone “rogue” weeks before President Biden left office, Valadao released a statement saying he had spoken to agency officials and urged them to target “criminals rather than those responsible for producing our nation’s food supply.”
Valadao, a dairy farmer and the son of immigrants from the Azores islands of Portugal, says on his campaign website that he supports a “reasonable and responsible” pathway to citizenship, a guest worker program that could stabilize the agricultural workforce and a focus on removing immigrants who have committed serious crimes.
Last year, he sponsored the Dignity Act, a bipartisan bill that would create a new temporary legal status for immigrants who meet certain requirements and pass a criminal background check.
Valadao declined an interview request but said in a statement that “our immigration system is broken after decades of inaction, and it’s critical that we restore law and order while recognizing the contributions of people who have lived and worked peacefully in our communities for years.”
In Texas, Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico frequently has said that the southern border should be treated “like our front porch,” with a welcome mat and a lock on the door.
Talarico says immigration enforcement is necessary but that resources should be refocused to target cartels, gang members and human traffickers. As for ICE, he said the government should “tear down this secret police force and replace it with an agency that is actually going to focus on public safety.”
Texas Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, has embraced President Trump’s crackdown on immigration.
(Tony Gutierrez / Ap Photo/tony Gutierrez)
Centrist Democratic strategists said Talarico’s messaging strikes the right tone for swing voters.
During the Biden administration, voters lost trust with Democrats on immigration and border security, said Sarah Pierce, a former U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services official who leads immigration work at the center-left think tank Third Way. That needs to stay top of mind for Democratic candidates, she said.
“Americans don’t trust that Democrats are even willing to enforce immigration laws, so obviously there’s a lot of pressure on the party to rectify that,” Pierce said. “At the same time, this is the most anti-immigrant administration we’ve had in history.”
Talarico’s opponent, Texas Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton, touts Trump’s hard-line immigration policies and has made border security a key part of his campaign.
Paxton also believes states should work with the federal government on immigration enforcement. This year, his office conducted raids in Houston and transferred 50 immigrants to ICE custody.
James Talarico, the Democratic Senate candidate in Texas, has called for reforming Immigration and Customs Enforcement but unlike some Democratic candidates, he has not called for abolishing the agency.
(Danielle Villasana / Getty Images)
Matt Terrill, a Republican strategist who was chief of staff for then-Sen. Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign, said Republican candidates need Trump to turn out the GOP base so they retain control of Congress.
Some Republican candidates are conveying a more nuanced message, but it might not matter to voters who already feel betrayed by Trump. That’s the assessment of Matthew Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University who studies Republican and Homeland Security politics.
“A lot of Republican candidates are struggling to figure out a message on what had been a great political strength that has turned into a major liability,” Dallek said. “Different Republicans are giving different answers to try to appeal to the Latino vote, maybe to independents, to voters who might typically vote Republican and support closed borders, but think that ICE has gone too far.”
Many Republican candidates aren’t avoiding immigration. A Third Way analysis of last month’s spending on immigration-related ads in competitive House and Senate races found that Republicans had spent more than $50 million — five times more than Democrats.
At issue, however, is the messaging. Earlier this year, White House officials and House Republican leaders reportedly told their members to avoid talking about “mass deportations” and talk up removing criminals.
Rep. Gabe Evans, who is running for reelection in Colorado, described the distinction as “gangbangers, not grandmas.”
At the Republican National Convention in 2024, Rep. Monica De La Cruz (R-Texas) denounced “open borders” before a crowd waving signs reading “mass deportation now!”
As the Trump administration’s enforcement campaign took shape, however, she signed a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson calling on ICE to focus its resources on arresting immigrants with criminal records, and in March she intervened after local high school mariachi performers were detained.
This month, De La Cruz released a campaign ad, featuring the wife of a DACA recipient who was detained this year by ICE. The wife said that she had voted for Democrats before, “but Monica puts people over politics.”
A representative for De La Cruz did not respond to requests for comment.
Her opponent, Tejano musician Bobby Pulido, said he doesn’t like talking in absolute terms like abolishing ICE. But without the historic funding approved by Republicans this year, the agency would have been prevented from continuing what he sees as bad policy on humanitarian and economic levels.
But Pulido also says that the Biden administration waited too long to impose border restrictions.
“It feels like it went from ‘let ‘em all in’ to ‘kick ‘em all out,’” he said in an interview. “I don’t think that either one is good. We need immigrants, but everybody always says do it the legal way. We have to actually legislate pathways for that to happen.”
One Republican has directly broken with Trump in her bid for reelection. In a campaign ad released Sept. 17, Florida Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, standing in front of the White House, speaks directly to the president. “The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today,” she said.
Polling shows that many in that district, where Latinos make up three-quarters of registered voters and more than half were born outside the U.S., now think Trump’s immigration crackdown has gone too far. Polls also show Salazar is deadlocked with her opponent, Eliott Rodriguez, a fellow Cuban American and newscaster who fired back at her for voting in favor of Trump’s policies.
