Trump’s immigration policies: Hated by the media, loved by the voters

Nothing demonstrates the split between the American “mainstream” media and the average American voter than the views of each regarding the promised immigration reform policies our once and future president will implement beginning on Jan. 20, 2025.

The predominantly leftwing media is horrified that Donald Trump is pledging to protect America from the massive influx of undocumented immigrants that President Joe Biden and the Democrats have unleashed since January of 2021.

According to a NPR article published on Nov. 12, 2.4 million immigrants have shown up at our southern border in the past year, and according to an MSN article quoting the Migration Policy Institute, over 11 million illegal immigrants are living in the United States today, 3.8 million of them arriving since January 2021. After a stable period of illegal border crossings during the Trump administration, the influx of illegal crossings under Biden has been overwhelming and catastrophic, in both financial and security terms.

The assault on America’s borders is no accident. Biden encouraged it before he took up residence in the White House by pledging to undo the Trump-era immigration policies. In the October 2020 Nashville presidential debate with Trump, Biden promised a pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented people. Once elected, Biden issued an executive order less than two weeks later, on Feb. 2, 2021, that essentially threw the doors open by ordering government agencies to get rid of barriers to not only immigration, but to the naturalization process as well. After all, the millions of new undocumented immigrants aren’t much use to Biden and the Democrats unless they can become citizens and vote, right? Go ahead, folks, read the executive order and prove me wrong.

Since opening the floodgates in 2021, the Biden administration has done almost nothing to deal with our border crisis, assuming a posture of benign neglect in regard to the problem. After all, he did what he set out to do, which was to undo the Trump policies that were working, including the “remain in Mexico policy” and the construction of the border wall. His “Border Czar,” Vice President Kamala Harris, never seemed to find the border, except for a cursory visit to the El Paso ICE Central Processing Station, and Biden’s Homeland Security Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, doesn’t seem to think America should have borders at all, harping constantly about “America’s broken immigration system," which is code meaning that border security takes a back seat to letting everyone come into the country. At this point, no sane person believes Mayorkas when he says, “the border is secure.”

Now, all of this mess may have gone unnoticed by the majority of American voters if it had not been for two things: 1. The brilliant move by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to ship thousands of apprehended undocumented people to cities run by Democrats, like New York, and, 2. The violent, hate-filled actions by thousands of masked anti-Semitic and pro-terrorist demonstrators, with some being foreign nationals here on student and other visas. The first action actually brought the dilemma of housing, feeding, and caring for large numbers of illegals to the attention of the residents of Democrat-controlled cities, and the second rightly raised the specter of the possibility of large numbers of future terrorists quietly entering the country. Last week, FBI Director Christopher Wray had to concede that he had no idea of how many potential terrorists had made it into the country undetected as part of the 1.6 “gotaways” that have entered since 2021, as reported in an article from the Washington Examiner.

The impact of immigrants pouring into to “sanctuary cities” such as New York has shown that actual virtue costs more than liberal virtue-signaling. Democratic New York City Mayor Eric Adams probably had no problem with unfettered illegal immigration as long as it was a red state like Texas suffering, but now that he is being forced to cut $1.8 billion from his budget to pay for all of the new arrivals, he is squealing like a stuck pig, and New York voters are livid.

Trump is promising to fix the immigration mess, with reinstatement of his former policies, including travel bans, rebuilding the wall, plus mass deportations of undocumented people and ending automatic citizenship of “anchor babies.” We don’t truly appreciate what we have until it’s gone, and that can be said of former president Trump.

The leftwing media may be horrified, but American voters are ready to join Trump and fix the problem.

Dwight Weidman is a resident of Greene Township and is a graduate of Shepherd University. He is retired from the United States Department of Defense, where his career included assignments In Europe, Asia, and Central America. He has been in leadership roles for the Republican Party in two states, most recently serving two terms as Chairman of the Franklin County Republican Party. He has been an Amateur Radio Operator since 1988, getting his first license in Germany, and is a past volunteer with both Navy and Army MARS, Military Auxiliary Radio Service, and is also an NRA-certified firearms instructor. In his spare time, he dabbles in genealogy and learning new languages.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Trump’s immigration policies: Hated by the media, loved by the voters