As illegal border crossings skyrocketed two years ago, Texas Republicans in unison railed against the Biden administration’s immigration policies and vowed, if given power, to seal the U.S.-Mexico border and support Donald Trump’s promised mass deportations.
These days, Republicans aren’t always on the same page about the border or immigration.
The party that’s long leveraged immigration to animate voters is now grappling with the political pitfalls of the Trump administration’s success in stopping most border crossings, which has both pushed the issue significantly down voters’ priority list and prompted a pivot to the more controversial deportation effort inside the country. As they gear up to defend their tenuous control of Congress this fall, Republicans find themselves having to defend the president’s crackdown, which has resulted in the deaths of at least three Americans and the deportations of thousands of people with no criminal record.
