President Donald Trump quickly achieved one of his four core campaign promises upon taking office: securing the U.S.-Mexico border after illegal crossings hit an all-time high of 8 million under the Biden administration.
But in the lead-up to the midterm elections, Republican candidates have not significantly focused on reminding voters about Trump’s achievements at the border.
The Trump administration took aggressive action to secure the border, which led to a drastic decline in illegal immigration at the southern border. Illegal immigration at the border has continued to remain at levels not seen since the Nixon administration.
Right-leaning immigration and campaign analysts told the Washington Examiner in interviews this week that candidates have seemed to skirt the topic and offered a number of likely reasons, including that it is old news, other issues are more pressing, and that it upset voters who are concerned about deportations, which make up the more controversial half of Trump’s immigration agenda.
White House border czar Tom Homan was hired by Trump to secure the border and stated in a text message to the Washington Examiner on Monday that the government had completed the task in “record time.”
“We didn’t need new laws. We needed a new President who allowed the Border Patrol to do their job and enforce the law,” Homan wrote. “The men and women of ICE also share in the success of a secure border because they have sent a message to the whole world that they will enforce immigration laws in the interior and continue to break monthly historic records for arrests and deportations. I am honored to work for President Trump. Promises made. Promises kept.”
Republicans avoid the issue
Former immigration judge Andrew Arthur said there was no doubt that Trump did, in fact, deliver on his 2024 promise. The more than 2 million illegal immigrants arrested by Border Patrol attempting to enter the country each fiscal year under former President Joe Biden quickly dropped to roughly 10,000 per month and have remained at historic lows, according to public data from Customs and Border Protection.
“Republican candidates are not highlighting President Trump’s and the Republican Party’s success in securing the border,” said Arthur, resident fellow in law and policy for the Center for Immigration Studies, an organization that supports limiting immigration. “They’re not even messaging on the degree to which the American people are safer, the degree to which our public benefit system is no longer being strained by tens of thousands of migrants being released into the United States every month, which was the status quo under the Biden administration.”
Arthur noted that the Trump administration effectively had the border under control by March 2025 — and how that quickly became “old news” in a news cycle that is constantly changing.
“Most Republican candidates, like most candidates overall, focus test their political messages to identify the ones that resound most strongly with the voters,” Arthur said. “And you know this isn’t one simply because one, it happened so quickly, and two, it simply restored the border to the state that the American people expected it to be in. You don’t get credit for doing your job, and that’s really unfortunate for the president, the Republicans.”
Simon Hankinson, senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation’s border security and immigration center, agreed fewer candidates were talking about the border than expected for a similar reason.
“Unfortunately, in politics there’s not much gratitude, so people will get onto you for the things you didn’t do, and they won’t give you much credit for the things you did,” Hankinson said. “So, of course, all the focus now is on enforcement and all these legal battles about that, because the border is seen as a victory, and it’s kind of game over.”
But some Republicans may be avoiding a victory lap on the border because doing so could force them to talk about the parts of Trump’s immigration agenda that are less popular than border security.
Brendan Steinhauser, a Republican operative in Texas and partner at Austin-based public affairs firm Steinhauser Strategies, said border talk could lead to conversations about more hotly contested topics, such as interior immigration enforcement.
Even so, with just a month until Election Day, Steinhauser said Republicans would be smart to focus on what the Trump administration has done on the border.
“The border security policy win at the White House was one of the most incredible policy wins of the last 50 years,” Steinhauser said. “This is an area that I think they deserve credit for, and I think if they spent more time talking about it publicly and reminding people how bad things were previously and how much better they are now, I think that would help them, especially because they’re struggling with these political headwinds having to do with things like affordability, the cost of living, data centers, and everything else.”
ICE OFFICERS SAY INTERNAL CHAOS HAS LED THOUSANDS OF EMPLOYEES TO DEPART
When asked about Republican messaging on Trump’s border security initiative, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said the results — 3 million illegal immigrants voluntarily and involuntarily removed from the country — “speak for themselves.”
“Radical Democrats want to go back to open borders and abolish ICE and Border Patrol. The contrast has never been clearer,” White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis wrote in an email.