Trump to Democrats eager to run on border issues: 'Go ahead. Make my day'

It isn’t often that mainstream media plays the handmaiden of Donald Trump. But on Tuesday there they were, putting on their red caps and leading the lambs to slaughter with headline after headline.

“Suozzi gives Dems an immigration road map” — The Washington Post

“Democrats eye new immigration strategy after Suozzi win” — The Hill

“Leaning Into Migrant Woes, Suozzi Paves Election-Year Path for Democrats” — The New York Times

That’s how the Democrats stole a seat from the Republicans in the special election this past week in New York Congress 3.

They ran on the border.

The national newspapers told us so.

Border deal didn't secure Tom Suozzi's win

Democrat Tom Suozzi saw Donald Trump’s destruction of the U.S. Senate border deal — forged in large part by Arizona’s Kyrsten’s Sinema — and rode it straight to victory.

So the story line goes.

So the delusion goes.

Now Big Media is cheering on Democrats as they consider making immigration their winning issue in the fall. Or as The Hill puts it, “to go on offense” on immigration.

Please try that.

Please pretend the border deal was the catalyst for flipping NY 3 and not the hot mess that was Republican George Santos.

Republican George Santos was a hot mess

Santos was the last to win that seat in the tony parts of Queens and Long Island and greater Nassau County, until he finally became a scandal machine and was ceremoniously tossed out on his lying patoot.

Santos lied about producing a Broadway musical. Lied about being a volleyball star. Lied about his grandparents escaping the Holocaust and lied about being a multimillionaire.

He even lied that his mother had died in the 9/11 terror attacks, when in fact Mom outlived the Sept. 11 attacks by 15 years and wasn’t even in the United States during all of 2001.

Finally, for the sake of all of NY-3, he was mercifully expelled and put out to pasture, having been a source of unceasing embarrassment for the district.

On Tuesday, district voters punished the Republican Party for that humiliation.

GOP ran an unknown in Santos' place

With Santos out, the Republicans ran an Ethopian-immigrant and veteran of the Israeli Defense Forces, Mazi Pilip, to try to hold the Santos seat.

She had a fascinating life story, but she was a virtual unknown. Further, she had been Democrat up until the year 2012.

Now a Republican, Pilip was running against Democrat Tom Souzzi, who was essentially running as the incumbent.

The seat had once been Souzzi’s. Had he not left Congress in 2022 to run for governor of New York, you never would have heard of George Santos.

Souzzi had a lock on the NY-3 seat. He had won it handily in 2016, 2018 and 2020. And in that final year he crushed a less scandal-plagued George Santos by 12.5 points.

But in 2022, with Souzzi running for governor, Santos ran again and defeated a different Democrat for the office.

Democrats had huge advantages in this race

This year, Souzzi was back campaigning for NY-3, and doing so as a well-known and well-liked figure in the district, a moderate Democrat running in a region that is historically friendly ground for Democrats.

This election, registered Democrats outnumbered Republicans in NY-3 by 63,000 votes. An 11-point advantage.

In the 2024 House race, Democrats “vastly” outspent Republicans, Politico reports, $13.8 million versus $8.1 million.

Thanks to Donald Trump and his own delusions about early voting, Democrats in the district had built a lead — some 14,000 votes — in early votes, CBS News reported.

God, behaving like a New York Democrat, delivered a snowstorm on Election Day to punish all those conspiracy-addled Republicans. Even GOP-hired snowplows couldn’t make up the difference.

Brilliant.

Souzzi is no Biden Democrat on the border

On the issue of immigration, Souzzi was hardly a Biden Democrat. He had worked for years trying to solve the problem of illegal immigration.

When Joe Biden got into the White House, he shut down many of the Trump policies that controlled the flow of immigrants over the southern border.

Then he opened the floodgates.

Gallego is proof: That border politics are shifting

In the last two years under Biden’s watch, we’ve seen the highest level of illegal immigration in the nation’s history.

Tom Souzzi, on the other hand, was working with Republicans for years to try to get control of the border in humane ways.

In 2019, he co-authored an op-ed in The New York Times with then U.S. Rep. Peter King, a conservative New York Republican, in which they presented a joint proposal to “address the problems faced by undocumented immigration and the need for robust border security.”

“For more than 30 years, our government has failed to solve these problems,” they explained.

Suozzi has talked tough on immigration

In the 2024 election, Souzzi told a crowd of Long Island union carpenters, “People are upset that Democrats haven’t been tough enough on things like the border.”

The workers responded, “Exactly! ... That’s right! ... Yes, Sir,” as reported by The New York Times.

Souzzi shot back, “I’m tougher than you’ll ever be.”

After Joe Biden spent three years ignoring the pleas of border states to do something about the historic flows across the U.S.-Mexico line, Souzzi called on Biden to lock down the border.

When undocumented migrants assaulted New York police officers in Times Square, Souzzi barked, “That’s outrageous. Kick ‘em out.”

Souzzi is not a Trump Republican on border issues. He believes in humane reform and a pathway to citizenship.

But he has credibility on the issue that Joe Biden will never again enjoy, not after a first term in the White House that made Latin American migrants priority for food, shelter and health care over impoverished Americans camped out en masse in our major cities.

If Dems run on the border, they will lose

When the border deal broke down, Souzzi had the credibility to exploit it.

Biden does not.

As Democrats talk about making the failed border deal the centerpiece of Biden’s reelection, their progressive wing is warning such a strategy will be a gift to Donald Trump.

“The Republicans would love for the presidential election to be about immigration. Instead of — I dunno — threats to democracy, threats to abortion rights, Trump’s indictments, Trump’s rape, health care, the economy … I could go on and on,” wrote left-wing journalist Mehdi Hasan on the social-media platform X, formerly Twitter.

Somewhere Donald Trump is nodding his head and mouthing the words of another Republican and oft-accused fascist:

“Go ahead, make my day.”

Phil Boas is an editorial columnist for The Arizona Republic. Email him at phil.boas@arizonarepublic.com.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Democrats who run on border issues will lose to Trump