President Donald Trump promised a radical reset on immigration, and he didn’t waste any time getting started. Just hours after being sworn in on Jan. 20, he was seated in the Oval Office with a black permanent marker and a stack of leather-bound executive orders. By the end of Day 1, he’d revived many of the same programs and policies he’d previously carried out over four years during his first administration.
There were 10 orders related to immigration in all. And within them lay dozens of policy changes that, if implemented, would upend the immigration system and the lives of millions.
The blitz of executive order signing has continued, so fast and sweeping that it’s been hard to keep up, much less gauge its potential future impact. Trump has paused the resettlement of tens of thousands of refugees who’d already been vetted and approved to relocate to the United States, including as many as 15,000 Afghans. He ended humanitarian parole for immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela and Nicaragua leaving more than 500,000 already living here in legal limbo. He launched his promised effort to round up and remove millions of unauthorized immigrants starting with those accused of violent crimes, though less than half of the approximately 8,200 people arrested from Jan. 20 through Feb. 2 so far have criminal convictions, according to government data obtained by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present the Ratchet Effect…
trump did a lot of bad shit 16-20.
Biden undid some, but in the process tried to make a border wall part of the Dem platform against the wishes of the majority of Dem voters.
That (and other moves to the right) allowed trump to win in 2024.
Since some of his stuff like the border wall was adopted by Dems, he now has to go even further right to satisfy his voters.
So on a long timeline, the country is constantly moving right. And every step it depresses Dem turnout.
At this point it’s not enough for Dems to stop actively moving right. We need to go left fast.