Can progressives push their immigration agenda back into the spotlight?

It wasn’t long ago that Democrats embraced an unequivocally pro-immigrant stance.

The party once defined its immigration platform in opposition to the policies of former President Donald Trump’s first term: separating families detained at the border, a travel ban on Muslim-majority countries, and efforts to gut the asylum system among them. In 2020, President Joe Biden ran on a message of undoing the cruelties of his predecessor, and in his first week in office, he signed a flurry of executive actions doing just that.

Much has changed in the four years since. In the final weeks of the 2024 campaign, the rhetoric coming from Kamala Harris and most Democrats is decidedly different. There’s a greater focus on border security and less emphasis on immigrants’ rights and contributions to the country.

This pivot didn’t come from nowhere. Border crossings reached record highs at the end of 2023, fueling a Republican narrative of chaos that Americans appear to have embraced. Though crossings have come down significantly throughout 2024, more Americans still want to see immigration levels decrease than at any point since the early 2000s, just after the 9/11 terror attacks. Polls show most voters support stricter border security measures; a growing share wants mass deportations.

This is the political reality Democrats have had to confront ahead of the presidential election: Broadly, Americans hold anti-immigration views. It doesn’t really matter that Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, was known as a champion for immigrant rights in the Senate and during her 2020 presidential bid. In a race against Trump, who has upped the ante on his dehumanizing rhetoric about immigrants in the final stretch of the campaign, she can’t afford to look weak on the border if she wants to win. That’s especially true given immigration is an issue that has only become more salient among the independent voters she’s courting in key states.

“Before you can fix a policy, first you must get elected,” said Chuck Rocha, a Democratic strategist and former senior adviser on Sen. Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign who designed Sanders’s Latino vote outreach strategy. “[Republicans] have bullied Democrats for years on this issue, and I think it smart for the Harris campaign to not back down and take them on.”

Assuming Harris wins, what’s next for Democrats and liberals on immigration? The progressive left that was once so vocally pro-immigration has largely supported Harris despite her sprint to the center. That’s because progressives know full well that a Trump administration would be worse. But if Trump and his xenophobic agenda are defeated, that could make room for a leftist offensive on immigration. What would that look like, and will we see it during a Harris administration?

Democrats’ 2020 platform didn’t even mention border security. Instead, it focused on expanding legal immigration pathways and rolling back the US’s immigration detention regime. Four years after former President Barack Obama was dubbed the “deporter in chief,” it seemed as though Trump had pushed Democrats to embrace a newfound moral case for increasing immigration.

But amid a challenging new reality on the border and resulting political pressure, Biden advanced immigration policies that his Republican predecessor devised himself or would have at least approved of:

Harris played a role in executing this strategy, and immigration was part of her portfolio as vice president from the early months of Biden’s presidency. She was tasked with addressing the root causes of migration in a diplomatic role that primarily involved directing private-sector investment to Central America.

During a visit to Guatemala in June 2021, she delivered a controversial message to migrants: “Don’t come” to the US. When border crossings later spiked, she came under fire from Republicans as Biden’s failed “border czar,” a frame that the Biden administration sought to rebut.

In February, Biden tried to make concrete progress on immigration by endorsing a bipartisan bill that included border security measures that Democrats wouldn’t have dreamed of supporting a few years prior, including a new authority to quickly expel migrants arriving on the southern border at times of high demand. In exchange, Democrats would have gotten something they wanted: closing gaps in the legal immigration system that have left everyone from the children of high-skilled foreign workers to Afghan refugees in limbo.

At first, Republicans coalesced around the bill and it seemed as though it would pass — that is, until Trump began to lobby against it, reportedly stating he wanted to keep the border a live issue in the presidential election.

To be sure, Biden’s approach hasn’t been entirely focused on border security. It’s worth noting that Biden has also advanced one of the biggest efforts in over a decade to legalize undocumented immigrants. Under the new program, which is now on hold due to a legal challenge, approximately 500,000 spouses of US citizens and 50,000 of their stepchildren could be eligible to apply for permanent residence and get a green card without having to leave the US.

But such moves are the exception. The Biden era has generally seen Democrats move closer to Trump on immigration rather than further away. As the Democratic nominee, Harris has had to navigate that new normal.

Democrats outlined their immigration platform before Biden decided not to seek reelection, but Harris still needs to detail how she would approach the issue.

She has indicated in public appearances that her strategy will be two-pronged, focused on securing the border and developing earned pathways to citizenship, including for Dreamers in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which provides legal protections to migrants who came to the US without authorization as children.

She has repeatedly argued that Trump is simultaneously not tough enough and not compassionate enough on immigration, whereas she seems intent on presenting herself as striking that balance.

That’s been clear in her rhetoric, but what exactly that balance looks like in practice promises to be the subject of an intra-movement struggle, one that pits pro-immigrant activists against the party’s relative border hawks.

Harris’s rhetoric during the campaign has suggested a tougher-on-immigration approach.

For instance, when speaking at her only debate with Trump about the border bill that Democrats tried to pass in February, she cast the failed bill — and Trump’s advocacy against it — as evidence that the former president isn’t serious about finding a way to improve the situation at the US-Mexico border: “He preferred to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem,” Harris said.

During a Univision town hall earlier this month, Harris again criticized Trump for tanking the bill. However, this time, it was in response to a question from a voter whose mother died before she could become a US citizen. Harris argued that the bill could have created “a comprehensive earned pathway to citizenship for hard-working people” like the voter’s mother.

That’s not an entirely accurate portrayal of the bill. It would have expanded existing pathways to citizenship with the addition of 250,000 family- and employment-based visas and opened up a path to permanent status for Afghans who came to the US after American forces withdrew from Afghanistan, but it was hardly comprehensive in its approach.

Still, the interaction showed Harris trying to soften her tone, if not the border policies she supports.

“Depending on what venue she’s talking in, she frames the immigration issue a bit differently,” said Douglas Rivlin, a spokesperson for the immigrant advocacy group America’s Voice. “On Univision, her humanity came through in a way.”

Some progressives, however, see reason to believe that Harris would be more pro-immigrant as a president than she has been as a campaigner.

Rocha noted that the Harris campaign has hired immigrant activists, including Alida Garcia, who led immigration advocacy at the immigration and criminal justice reform advocacy group FWD.us, and Julie Chávez Rodriguez, the granddaughter of Latino civil rights activist and labor leader César Chávez. And that could suggest that her campaign is thinking about how to advance a pro-immigrant agenda within the current political environment.

Progressives also seem to believe that while they may not endorse all of Harris’s immigration policies, they can still find ways to work together, as they used to when she was a senator.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, recounted that Harris co-sponsored the first bill she ever introduced, a response to Trump’s travel ban. It sought to ensure that people had access to legal counsel in detention when they first arrived in the US.

“She cares about the dignity and humanity of people who come to this country,” Jayapal told Vox. “While I have disagreed with some of the immigration positions she has taken, I know that she will be a partner with us on this issue, rather than use immigrants as a political football the way Republicans and Donald Trump have.”

Jayapal’s comments are a reminder of why the pro-immigrant left has given Harris scope to operate against Trump, whose rhetoric about immigrants, from his debunked comments about Haitians eating pets to his claims that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of America, has recently reached a new low. But the question is whether — and for how long — progressives’ goodwill toward Harris will last if Trump is defeated.

Concretely, immigration battles under a Harris administration would likely play out on some of the same issues where the left criticized Biden, including his restrictions on asylum seekers at the border and the February border bill that Harris has held up as a model for Democrats going forward. Activists still want many of the same reforms Harris supported in 2020, such as swapping out deterrence-based policies for policies expanding safe pathways to come to the US and improving access to asylum.

However, the impulses that drive support for Trump’s immigration policies aren’t likely to just fade away, even if the man himself recedes from public life. So, a President Harris would likely still face demand from the American public to prioritize border security. That may not leave much room for her to adopt the mantle of the left’s priorities on immigration.

Advocates seem to acknowledge that reality as well as the practical challenges of passing immigration reform in a divided Congress or issuing executive actions on immigration that could be challenged in court.

“The American people are pretty clear about what they want to have happen on immigration. They want the balanced approach that Harris and the Democrats are for,” Rivlin said.

Advocates are holding out hope that Harris can use her bully pulpit to change the tone of the conversation about immigration in America, as she started to do at the Univision town hall. In Rivlin’s view, “That’s one of the most important things that needs to happen on immigration.”