It’s Not Really About Immigration

Monday, February 2, 2026

Do you remember Scott Pruitt?  You should. He was Trump’s very first EPA Chief Administrator and he was driven from that office in about a year.  Oh, there were all sorts of reasons why in the media and in the minds of Democrats, but in the end it was all about getting one over on Trump, finding a chink in his armor.  That’s all it really was, it was about scoring a win over the unthinkable president – bringing him “down to earth.”  In the end, I think that’s what’s going on with I.C.E., but this time around Trump is smarter and better defended and so things are getting out of hand.

Thirty years ago Democrats wanted to lower immigration generally, now they want open borders.  A move that dramatic, and that rapid has to be about politics, not policy.  I have seen the term “ICE Barbie” in a headline from a major outlet every day since Kristi Noem’s nomination.  She is clearly the designated chink in the second Trump administration.  But this time it is different.  Environmental policy was not front of the public mind.  It took the Biden administration and the expenditure of billions pursuing the pipe dream of “alternative energy” that nobody wanted before environmental policy was a mainline issue.  During Trump 1.0 it was a huge issue for business but not for the general public, so Democrats got the notch in their belt they were looking for.

Immigration is; however, different.  It is the centerpiece of Trump’s administration and it was the single most discussed issue in his campaign.  In gong after Noem and I.C.E. Democrats are not looking to injure Trump, they are going for the jugular.  (Although, if they get Noem’s scalp I am not at all sure they will like what comes after.)  we’ve talked a lot about how they are playing with passion, not reason.  That’s dangerous territory.

Other cities are joining Minneapolis in the raising the stakes and in some cases things are getting utterly lunatic.  And now the debate is getting truly serious in the halls of Congress.  But in the end will the decision Congress makes really be about immigration or will it simply be about peace in the streets?  And if it is about peace in the streets can we afford the mayhem that will follow?

Scoring one on Trump in the form of Scott Pruitt cost us billions, maybe even trillions, during the Biden administration.  The “climate change” justified expenditures were unimaginably enormous and we have all paid the price.  But in the end, money is just money.  Much more is at stake in the current situation.  Can we afford the mayhem that will follow in the wake of “reigning I.C.E. in?”  It won’t be about money, at least not entirely.  Sure we have lost billions in fraud in places like Minnesota to the open immigration policies.  But we have also lost lives in ways ranging from drug overdoses to slashing in subways.  The Left is trying to score this one on Trump by raising the stakes in the streets – but if we are honest it is going to take a lot more than two deaths to get the stakes high enough to match what open borders have already cost us.

I think we ought to call their bluff.  Like I hinted at a few paragraphs ago – Dump Noem, giving Congress room to fund I.C.E. fully, and then install Homan.  They’ll only think they scored one on Trump – and only for a minute.