Let me tell you about a bill that Republicans spent months negotiating. A bill that gave them almost everything they asked for on border security. A bill that would have been the most significant immigration enforcement legislation in decades.
Then Donald Trump killed it with a phone call.
Not because it was bad policy. Not because Democrats had loaded it with poison pills. But because he needed the issue more than he wanted a solution.
That single act tells you everything. And what's happening right now — in 2026, with ICE raiding churches and schools — is the direct result of a deliberate strategy to keep the system broken because the brokenness serves his politics.
Before we get to the policy, we need to talk about the words. Because the words came first, and the words made everything else possible.
"Invasion." "Infestation." "Poisoning the blood of our country." "Animals."
This isn't policy language. This is eliminationist rhetoric. When you call migration an "invasion," you're not arguing about visa categories or asylum processing times. You're invoking war. And in war, compromise is betrayal.
Trump didn't invent nativist rhetoric, but he mainstreamed it. He made "invasion" an acceptable word for cable news. He made "replacement theory" — once confined to white nationalist forums — a topic debated by senators.
This rhetoric has consequences beyond politics. The 2019 El Paso Walmart shooter killed 23 people. His manifesto used the word "invasion" repeatedly. He drove hours to target a city with a large Hispanic population.
That's not guilt by association. That's cause and effect. When leaders say we're being invaded, some people will act like it.
"When you call migration an 'invasion,' you're not arguing about policy. You're invoking war. And in war, compromise is betrayal."
Here's what people forget: comprehensive immigration reform used to be bipartisan.
Reagan signed amnesty for 3 million people in 1986. George W. Bush pushed hard for reform and nearly got it. The Gang of Eight bill in 2013 passed the Senate with 68 votes — including 14 Republicans. Business wanted it. Labor wanted it. Majorities of Americans supported it in poll after poll.
Then Trump came down that escalator in 2015, and everything changed.
But here's the thing that matters most: Trump had multiple chances to sign major immigration deals when he had power. He rejected every single one.
$25 billion for his wall, sitting on the table. He walked away.
Why? Because DACA recipients are more valuable as hostages than as citizens. Because a "crisis" you can campaign on is more useful than a solution you'd have to defend.
When the pandemic hit in 2020, the Trump administration didn't see a public health emergency. They saw an opportunity.
Title 42 — an obscure public health authority from 1944 — was invoked to expel asylum seekers at the border without any hearing, any process, any chance to make their legal case.
The official justification was preventing COVID spread. But:
Title 42 wasn't pandemic policy. It was immigration restriction wearing a mask — literally using COVID as a pretext to accomplish what they couldn't do through normal legal channels.
If you want one piece of evidence that Trump never wanted to solve immigration, it's the Lankford-Murphy bill of early 2024.
Senator James Lankford — a conservative Oklahoma Republican, a Sunday school teacher, about as MAGA-friendly as they come — spent months negotiating with Democrat Chris Murphy and independent Kyrsten Sinema. The result was a bill that gave Republicans an enormous amount of what they'd demanded:
This was not a Democratic wishlist. This was a genuine compromise — arguably tilted toward enforcement. Immigrant rights groups were furious. But Republicans had been demanding these provisions for years.
Then Trump posted on Truth Social: kill it.
"I do not think we should do a Border Deal, at all, unless we get EVERYTHING needed to shut down the INVASION."
But the actual message to Republican senators was simpler: Don't give Biden a win before the election. I need this issue.
Lankford was hung out to dry by his own party. Border state Republicans who desperately wanted the deal were overruled by a man who wasn't even in office yet. The bill died.
"He'd rather have the issue than the solution. He'd rather have the chaos than the fix. He needs the fear more than he wants the security."
The first Trump term was chaotic cruelty — family separation implemented so badly they literally couldn't reunite the children they'd taken. Agencies working at cross-purposes. Courts blocking half the executive orders.
The second term is different. This is organized cruelty.
The machinery has been built. The personnel are in place. The lawyers have figured out workarounds. Tom Homan is back as "border czar." And the deportation apparatus is operating at scale.
Consider what's happened in just the first months of 2025:
The scale is different now. The ambition is different. This isn't enforcement — it's a campaign.
And then there are the raids.
The Newark church raid in early 2025 sparked national outrage — ICE agents entering a house of worship, detaining people who had come for services. But it wasn't an aberration. It was a message.
ICE is now conducting operations at:
These were previously considered "sensitive locations" where enforcement was restricted. Those restrictions are gone. The point is not efficiency — churches aren't where you find the most undocumented people. The point is fear. The point is making immigrant communities feel that nowhere is safe.
High-profile raids are designed for cameras. Deportation flights are announced like military operations. The administration wants you to see this. The cruelty is meant to be visible.
Here's what makes me angry.
We could have fixed this. We had the votes, multiple times. We had the framework. We had bipartisan support. Comprehensive immigration reform would have:
Instead, we got DACA recipients used as bargaining chips. Asylum seekers forced to wait in Mexican border towns. Family separations. Children in cages. Detention camps. And now, a deportation machine that's pulling workers out of industries that can't function without them.
The labor shortages are already appearing. Agriculture. Construction. Food processing. Hospitality. The economy needs these workers. Everyone knows it. But the political logic of fear is more powerful than the economic logic of need.
I wish I had an optimistic ending. I don't.
Immigration policy is so poisoned by bad faith that I don't know how we rebuild consensus. The word "compromise" has become an insult. Any deal is "amnesty." Any amnesty is betrayal.
But here's what I do know:
The system isn't broken by accident. It was broken on purpose, by someone who benefits from the brokenness. Understanding that is the first step.
Go deeper: This post draws on "How Trump Subverted and Weaponized Immigration Reform" — a 15-chapter open-access book at Quarex. Free, no paywall, no login required.