‘Self-Depor­ta­tion’ Is Back

When Mitt Rom­ney was defeat­ed in the 2012 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, win­ning just 27 per­cent of the His­pan­ic vote, many post­mortems con­clud­ed that his rhetoric on immi­gra­tion was too harsh.

The Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee com­mis­sioned an autop­sy after­ward that famous­ly called for immi­gra­tion lib­er­al­iza­tion, includ­ing an amnesty for most ille­gal immi­grants already in the coun­try. The GOP smart set believed that this was the only way to diver­si­fy the party’s elec­toral coali­tion.

Per­haps the most sur­pris­ing crit­ic of Rom­ney on this front was Don­ald Trump. “He had a crazy pol­i­cy of self depor­ta­tion which was mani­a­cal,” Trump said of Rom­ney at the time in an inter­view with News­max.

“The Democ­rats didn’t have a pol­i­cy for deal­ing with ille­gal immi­grants, but what they did have going for them is they weren’t mean-spir­it­ed about it,” Trump added. “They didn’t know what the pol­i­cy was, but what they were is they were kind.”

Fast for­ward 12 years lat­er and Trump was elect­ed to a sec­ond term as pres­i­dent with increased sup­port from His­pan­ic and Asian vot­ers while run­ning on a plat­form of mass depor­ta­tions. Trump’s ini­tial nom­i­na­tion and elec­tion in 2016, which includ­ed calls for build­ing a wall along the south­ern bor­der, was seen as a repu­di­a­tion of such reac­tions, includ­ing the RNC autop­sy.

Trump won 40 per­cent of Asian-Amer­i­cans and 46 per­cent of His­pan­ics, accord­ing to the exit polls, beat­ing George W. Bush’s recent high from 2004. He actu­al­ly car­ried His­pan­ic men, receiv­ing 54 per­cent of their votes to Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Harris’s 44 per­cent.

Some major­i­ty-Lati­no coun­ties vot­ed Repub­li­can at the pres­i­den­tial lev­el for the first time in decades. Starr Coun­ty in Texas is the most heav­i­ly His­pan­ic coun­ty in the coun­try. It vot­ed for Trump, the first GOP pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee to win there since the 19th cen­tu­ry.

While the num­bers vary, some polls have found grow­ing sup­port for mass depor­ta­tions as the bor­der descend­ed into chaos under the Biden admin­is­tra­tion. Ille­gal immi­grants are being housed at tax­pay­er expense in deep-blue states far away from the bor­der. Some of the biggest immi­gra­tion-relat­ed con­tro­ver­sies of the 2024 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign took place in Auro­ra, Col­orado and Spring­field, Ohio.

Gallup found that a sol­id major­i­ty, 55 per­cent, of Amer­i­cans want to reduce immi­gra­tion. The ven­er­a­ble poll­ster has been track­ing pub­lic opin­ion on this issue for quite some time and this is the largest per­cent­age look­ing to decrease immi­gra­tion since 2001. Only 16 per­cent would increase immi­gra­tion lev­els.

The bor­der cri­sis has changed what the pub­lic is will­ing to tol­er­ate on immi­gra­tion and bor­der secu­ri­ty, at least for now. An under­rat­ed “root cause” of the migrant influx was that por­tions of the out­go­ing Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s polit­i­cal coali­tion do not believe it is legit­i­mate for rel­a­tive­ly wealthy, West­ern coun­tries to enforce their immi­gra­tion laws or bor­ders at all. Now you have Lati­nos vot­ing for a hypo­thet­i­cal deporter-in-chief, once an insult when used to describe either Rom­ney or Barack Oba­ma.

Oba­ma stepped up depor­ta­tions because he want­ed to build cred­i­bil­i­ty on enforce­ment in order to pass an immi­gra­tion amnesty. It did not work. He would go on to be replaced as pres­i­dent by Trump.

Trump has come to dom­i­nate the Repub­li­can Par­ty in as much a break with Rom­ney as Oba­ma. Rom­ney will no longer even be in Wash­ing­ton for a sec­ond Trump term, hav­ing retired after a sin­gle term rep­re­sent­ing Utah in the Sen­ate.

But that’s not to say there’s noth­ing Trump can learn from Rom­ney on the sig­na­ture issue of immi­gra­tion. Some lev­el of self-depor­ta­tion, encour­ag­ing ille­gal immi­grants to return home vol­un­tar­i­ly, will be nec­es­sary. It will also help make Trump’s depor­ta­tion pol­i­cy polit­i­cal­ly sus­tain­able in the face of hos­tile media cov­er­age and the inevitable removal of oth­er­wise sym­pa­thet­ic peo­ple.

As a sen­a­tor, Rom­ney was a big pro­po­nent of E‑Verify. This enforce­ment tool would help dry up the jobs mag­net that is a major dri­ver of ille­gal immi­gra­tion. Vice President–elect J.D. Vance was one of the cospon­sors of the most recent ver­sion of Romney’s bill. 

More broad­ly, tar­get­ing the unsym­pa­thet­ic employ­ers of ille­gal immi­grants would not only be a good way to deal with this issue. It would show a real change toward a more pop­ulist Repub­li­can Par­ty that sides with work­ers against big busi­ness­es that seek to pay them an unfair wage. 

That would be a real realign­ment. But it wouldn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly require a total aban­don­ment of Romney’s Repub­li­can Par­ty either.

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