MAGA allies say Trump is going soft on deportations
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Attendees display signs supporting mass deportation policies during the Republican National Convention on July 17, 2024, in Milwaukee, Wis. Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images
Some conservatives say President Trump is flirting with betraying his biggest campaign promise on mass deportations — and the voters who put him there.
Why it matters: The White House is backing away from mass deportation rhetoric ahead of the midterms, infuriating the once-fringe immigration hardliners who considered Trump their last shot at reversing decades of mass migration.
- "Our basic goal of the Mass Deportation Coalition is to actually provide Trump with what we call kind of a right flank, saying, 'No, Mr. President, you're listening to the wrong people,'" Mark Morgan, the former head of ICE and Customs and Border Protection, told Axios.
The big picture: The Mass Deportation Coalition, led by the Oversight Project's Mike Howell, spans GOP think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, newer advocacy groups like the Immigration Accountability Project, and a number of Young Republican clubs.
- They believe they still have public support on their side to persuade Trump to stick to his campaign promise, despite the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti and numerous other use-of-force incidents.
- In their view, it's the wealthy donors, big business and industry groups who are out of line with the public.
- "If Trump had said what industry wanted [on the campaign trail], 'I'm going to keep the illegals here so you can have cheap labor,' he would not be in the White House," Howell said. "He'd be in a prison cell right now."
Zoom in: "The President has only gotten pressure in his face to tone down the enforcement," Howell, a former Homeland Security official in Trump's first term, told Axios.
- "The truth is, the first year was not a year of mass deportation," he said. "A conscious decision was made to go after the worst first, which was, we'll call it a deviation from the central campaign promise of mass deportations."
- The coalition is pushing for what it calls Phase 2 — at least 1 million deportations per year.
Between the lines: The coalition believes top Republicans, including White House staffers, are divided on the issue.
- Stephen Miller, deputy White House chief of staff, is a natural ally for the group, though they say they haven't met with him.
- Some Republicans in Congress, like Rep. Chip Roy (Texas) and Sen. Mike Lee (Utah), are seen as still committed. And some staff within DHS are also on board and have attended informal meetings with the coalition.
- Their opponents are those with ties to lobbyists and former lobbyists in the administration, Howell said, declining to single out staff by name.
The other side: "Nobody is changing the Administration's immigration enforcement agenda and the President's entire team is on the same page when it comes to implementing his policies," White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told Axios in a statement.
The latest: Across Capitol Hill, the administration and the relevant agencies, the coalition has already been making its case for Phase 2.
- "These are relationships that have been built over a decade or more," Morgan said. "We're trying to influence them not to back off, stay the course with what the president promised the American people."
- It recently released a policy playbook for the executive branch with more than a dozen ideas to ramp up enforcement.
State of play: The coalition pegs the number of ICE removals at about 350,000 in fiscal year 2025, compared to 271,400 in the prior year under President Biden. That's a relatively modest increase considering the enormous effort and resources that went into it.
- There are no official figures for how many people Trump deported in his first year. While DHS has sent out press releases, touting more than 2 million self-deportations, ICE has not submitted its latest year-end report to Congress.
- Morgan has heard the number of "got aways" — people who cross the border undetected — last year was about 25,000–30,000. Border Patrol also hasn't shared any official figures.
- The DHS statistics office hasn't updated its website since President Biden was in office. It previously showed deportation data monthly.
The bottom line: At the last Republican convention, the party was united on immigration as attendees waved "mass deportation now" signs.
- "I'll put it to you this way: The people holding the signs on the floor in the general seating, those are my people," Howell said. "The people in the suites, those are not my people. That's who we're going up against."
