Challenges Ahead

Assume Trump wins. The Wall Street Journal discusses the question What Can Trump Deliver on Illegal Migration?

We know Donald Trump can talk the talk on illegal migration. The question is what he would be able to deliver in a second term.

In 2016 Trump vowed to wall off the southern border and send the bill to Mexico. It didn't happen. Now Mr. Trump is promising to "carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history."

Daniel Di Martino, a native of Venezuela who follows the economics of migration at the Manhattan Institute, is skeptical. "Twenty years ago, 90% of the people arriving were Mexican," Mr. Di Martino says. "Today, maybe two-thirds are not Mexican. It's easier to send back Mexicans. It's not so easy to send back others. You can't send to Mexico people who are not Mexican. 

"Nobody who has a pending immigration court date can be deported until their case is resolved through the immigration courts," Mr. Di Martino says. "And the people who have dates are the recent people who came under Biden." Which means that if Mr. Trump deports anybody, it's likely to be the far more sympathetic cases who arrived decades ago, stayed out of trouble, put down roots and may now have American spouses and children.

Mr. Trump might have designs on reviving "Remain in Mexico" protocols, under which some non-Mexican asylum seekers were forced back across the border and housed in makeshift encampments while their claims were adjudicated. But Mexico has taken a more authoritarian turn since Mr. Trump left office, and it's uncertain whether the new government's judicial reforms would accommodate such a policy. Mr. Trump likewise may try to reinstate Title 42, which prevented migrants from applying for asylum during Covid. But that was an emergency measure, and bringing it back might not survive a court challenge now that the health scare has ended.

The border is a priority for voters this year, and polling consistently has shown that they trust Donald Trump far more than Kamala Harris to handle the issue. If Mr. Trump is elected to a second term, the current administration's disastrous migrant policies will have played an outsize role. No one expects Mr. Trump to dial down his grandiose deportation rhetoric between now and the election, but if he wins, reality will set in at some point. Voters deserve to know what is and isn't doable on day one.