Pro-American activists and groups are slamming the establishment’s bipartisan push for a stealth nationwide amnesty that would help progressives and CEOs freely use the huge population of million illegal migrants to sideline American citizens.
The stealth amnesty got a big push forward on Tuesday night when Senate Democrats and Republicans agreed to delay passage of the 2026 funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security. The DHS bill is now being held back until Senate Democrats and Republicans can include a series of apparently minor changes that would create a huge bureaucratic barrier to the deportation of non-violent illegal migrants.
But pro-American legislators and activists are fighting back.
“We should not give Democrats a single INCH when it comes to backing law enforcement,” tweeted Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL). “Enforce the law. Deport criminals.”
“I am a conservative first and Republican second for a reason,” said a tweet from radio host Mark Levin, adding:
Are you hearing more and more Republican officials talking about deporting ONLY violent criminal illegal aliens? And some are even talking about granting a “pathway to citizenship” for non-violent illegal aliens? … it is disastrous on many levels.
“If the illegal alien gets to stay, it’s amnesty,” said the Heritage Foundation. “No amnesty. More deportations. Period. Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
“Talking about amnesty is establishment blather,” tweeted former GOP Representative Matt Gaetz. “I want to see every illegal deported.”
“I’m sorry, but that’s not what we voted for,” said TV host Megyn Kelly. “We voted for them all to get out.”
NPR reported:
“We’re not going to keep ICE from doing their job,” said Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla. “The American people wanted the president to enforce law and order and ICE is doing their job.”
Sen. James Lankford, an Oklahoma Republican who sits on the homeland security committee, said he did not see a need for any further policy changes. He noted that the current DHS funding bill awaiting a vote already includes additional funding for body cameras and oversight. “I don’t see one that’s needed above and beyond what’s already there,” Lankford said.
The amnesty push is happening because Trump’s migration enforcement and low-migration economic policies are successfully helping the ordinary wage-earning voters that he needs in November.
For example, the Los Angeles Times reported on January 28. “Finally, a renter’s market’: L.A. rent prices drop to four-year low”:
Sandra Gomez braced for impact as she opened the lease renewal offer for her East L.A. apartment in September. She paid $2,000 for the last 12 months, but since the unit wasn’t covered by L.A.’s Rent Stabilization Ordinance, her landlord could jack up the price for the next lease. The new price? $1,950. “I thought it was a mistake,” Gomez said. “Since when does rent get cheaper in L.A.?”
The pushback “is all about cheap labor,” Rosemary Jenks, founder of the Immigration Accountability Project, told Breitbart News, adding:
It’s absolutely, 100 percent, amnesty. It doesn’t matter if there’s no path to citizenship or anything else. If you let illegal aliens work with the permission of the federal government, it is amnesty.
In contrast, Congress and the administration should be encouraging federal checks on employers, she said. Those checks do not get on the evening news, and directly impact the managers who hire illegals, she said, adding:
If they’re serious about mass deportations, then worksite enforcement is really the only way to get there … the President promised mass deportations … the only way to do that is worksite enforcement.
Trump, however, wants to avoid political conflict over the budgets. He has endorsed the overnight Thursday deal that approves five funding bills, but delays and isolates the DHS funding bill. “The only thing that can slow our Country down is another long and damaging Government Shutdown,” he said in a late-night Truth Social post, adding:
I am working hard with Congress to ensure that we are able to fully fund the Government, without delay. Republicans and Democrats in Congress have come together to get the vast majority of the Government funded until September, while at the same time providing an extension to the Department of Homeland Security (including the very important Coast Guard, which we are expanding and rebuilding like never before). Hopefully, both Republicans and Democrats will give a very much needed Bipartisan “YES” Vote.
The establishment’s amnesty push is coming from Democrat-aligned open-borders progressives and from GOP-aligned business groups.
The Democrats’ leader, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), “is hoping to craft a bipartisan deal on reforms to immigration enforcement, including warrant requirements and ending masked officers,” said Semafor, a media outlet for Washington lobbyists and staffers. “That will be a huge challenge, but senators are relieved to move past the immediate shutdown threat.
Democrats claim the changes are needed because two activists were killed while impeding ICE officers in Minneapolis. Democrats and their media allies, however, said little when thousands of migrants and Americans were killed while President Joe Biden refused to enforce the nation’s immigration laws.
Democrats say they need minor adjustments to operating procedures, such as body cameras for ICE and bans on face masks; rules that require more judicial warrants; and requirements to work with state and local governments.
But those small rules are intended by Democrats to shut down deportations from their sanctuary cities, where illegal migrants are widely used in place of American citizens. That replacement is good for employers — but also for local governments because it provides Democrat-run agencies with a new inflow of desperate and grateful clients.
Small rules can have huge impacts. For example, any rule that requires cooperation with local law enforcement would allow both Republican- and Democrat-run jurisdictions to quietly throttle the enforcement rules that allow Americans to earn decent wages and afford decent housing.
Similarly, the Democrats are demanding that federal agencies get federal warrants before arresting illegal migrants. But federal judges cannot issue warrants for state and local crimes. So that Democrat rule would quietly block ICE’s current policy of arresting and deporting the many non-violent migrants who violate state and local laws and ordinances. The Daily Wire reported:
“There would be no more immigration arrests,” the source said. “It’s the functional equivalent of getting a warrant before issuing a speeding ticket. It’s the entire reason why ‘administrative’ arrests exist in the first place. If every single illegal alien who is charged with ‘Entry without Inspection’ was treated like a criminal arrest then they would have, among other things, right to counsel provided by the United States would be impossible.”
“The demand for judicial warrants is a poison pill,” noted Bill Essayli, Trump’s First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California. “It would effectively provide amnesty to illegal immigrants who have not [been convicted of] a federal felony.”
Establishment Republicans say they want ICE to deport criminal migrants.
But that focus means they want ICE to ignore the many non-violent illegal migrants that are used by donors and employers to cut wages paid to Americans and their communities.
“I’m a moderate on this,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) declared on January 6 as he declared his support for widespread hiring of illegal migrants:
I think that most of the people that are here and working … and can pass a background check, I would give them no welfare, and I would give them no citizenship, no voting rights, but you can work and we won’t arrest you … They’re hardworking people. They work in our fields, they pick our tomatoes, they clean fish, they work in chicken houses. They do a lot of the dirty jobs in our country.
“We need a national conversation about what we’re going to do about people who have come here, some of them 20 years ago, who’ve been obeying the law, paying taxes, good neighbors, have kids, go to PTA,” former Rep. Newt Gingrich told Larry Kudlow on Fox News. “There should be some middle ground,” where illegal migrants would be allowed to work but not vote, he added.
“Democrats have some reforms that make sense to me, body cameras, making ICE more like other agencies, but that’s a band-aid,” Sen. Lindsey Graham told Fox News. The primary goal of any deal, he insists, should be to end the Democrats’ sanctuary cities. Graham is talking up his stealth amnesty plan as an approved deal, saying, “I just concluded a deal with the White House to come up with a sanctuary-city bill.”
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) wants to put curbs on DHS polices. He is a long-standing supporter of growing the economy with migrants.
“Enforcing immigration laws that remove dangerous criminals from our streets and neighborhoods makes us safer and increases our national security,” said Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS). “This can only be accomplished if local, state, and federal officials work together to uphold the law.”
GOP governors are also pushing for the rollback of ICE enforcement. In Oklahoma, “We need to allow an employer to match up with that [existing illegal migrant] workforce,” Gov. Kevin Stitt (R-OK) declared. “We’re overcomplicating this … [and] don’t give them U.S. citizenship.
The Democrat’s push is just political theater, Sen. Dave McCormick (R-PA) said. “If they do what they’re saying, they’re not going to hurt DHS or the Border Patrol. They’re going to hurt the Coast Guard and FEMA and the Secret Service. … It is for them to go to their voters and say, ‘We’re standing up to President Trump!’”
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