As illegal border crossings skyrocketed two years ago, Texas Republicans in unison railed against the Biden administration’s immigration policies and vowed, if given power, to seal the U.S.-Mexico border and support Donald Trump’s promised mass deportations.
These days, Republicans aren’t always on the same page about the border or immigration.
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The party that’s long leveraged immigration to animate voters is now grappling with the political pitfalls of the Trump administration’s success in stopping most border crossings, which has both pushed the issue significantly down voters’ priority list and prompted a pivot to the more controversial deportation effort inside the country. As they gear up to defend their tenuous control of Congress this fall, Republicans find themselves having to defend the president’s crackdown, which has resulted in the deaths of at least three Americans and the deportations of thousands of people with no criminal record.
Even staunch immigration hawks have at times encouraged their peers to cool their rhetoric and “be more measured,” as U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz put it in a rare critique of the White House’s response to backlash over killings by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agents.
“In general, we need to have respect for law enforcement officers in the country,” Gov. Greg Abbott said after one ICE shooting. “They, being the White House, need to recalibrate on what needs to be done to make sure that respect is going to be re-instilled.”
With those bare majorities in Washington, Republicans are also stumbling through conversations about what sort of immigration policy the GOP supports, revealing disunity as some candidates — particularly those in competitive districts — endorse immigration reform that would let undocumented residents secure temporary legal status, while others in the party double down on holding a hard line.
For years, Texas Republicans have been united on immigration and border security as voters demonstrated an unquenchable desire for the state to do more on what many ranked as their top priority. But as the issue has become less urgent for many Texans, and as poll after poll shows critical voting blocs like independents and Latinos are souring on the president’s crackdown, GOP candidates are facing the prospect of their most reliable issue losing its potency heading into November’s midterms.
“Republicans have shot themselves in the foot,” said Chuck Rocha, a Democratic strategist who has worked in Texas politics for decades. “They could have made this into something very politically tenable if they would have just closed the border, as they did, and just talked about how much safer they’ve made Texas, whether it was or it was not.”
Even so, some Texas Republicans are signaling that they still see the issue as their ace in the hole for November. Abbott, who spearheaded the state’s multibillion-dollar border crackdown during the Biden administration, ran a digital ad earlier this year contrasting his Operation Lone Star initiative with Democratic presidential candidates who, in 2019, said they wanted to provide coverage to undocumented immigrants as part of their healthcare plans.
Barring a shift that brings immigration back to the fore for voters, the midterms will test whether that sort of message will resonate with a Texas electorate that, according to recent polling, has shifted its priorities.
In April 2024, as the Biden administration struggled to contain illegal border crossings, 68% of Republican voters said immigration or border security was the state’s most important problem, according to a survey conducted by the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. Forty-four percent of independents agreed.
Last month, only 20% of Republicans and 8% of independents shared that sentiment in a poll from the same group — the lowest measured by the UT pollsters across more than a decade of statewide surveys. Inflation and the economy, collectively, came in as the top issue for Texans, even eclipsing immigration among Republicans.
To be sure, Democrats have not established a cohesive immigration message themselves, and Republicans still have the upper hand on the issue in the eyes of voters. And the state’s GOP leaders are still wielding the issue against Democrats, like recently when Democratic leaders of various cities in the state tried to set guardrails around how police departments work with ICE.
Abbott quickly threatened to slash thousands of dollars of public safety grants slated for those cities. Attorney General Ken Paxton opened investigations into whether the local officials had violated state law that prohibits “sanctuary cities,” where police can’t work with ICE.
All of the cities reversed course.
One thing helping Democrats find their footing, however, is that they have a clear target to focus on: Trump and his administration’s aggressive ICE tactics.
In Texas, the immigration crackdown has played out more discreetly than in other states whose cities with Democratic leaders received surges of ICE officers, who then clashed with residents. Police departments and sheriffs across Texas have signed up to work with ICE more than in any other state, records from the agency show.
Those variables could keep immigration a winning issue for the GOP, said Brendan Steinhauser, a Republican strategist who has worked in national and Texas politics. Republicans can tout a policy victory in reducing border crossings and point to the state’s contributions, like the partnerships with ICE or Operation Lone Star, the $11 billion mission that sent Department of Public Safety officers and State Guard troops to the border during Joe Biden’s presidency.
“It was, by all accounts, a humanitarian crisis on the border and I think that’s pretty much stopped,” Steinhauser said. “It is different both because we’re a border state and because we haven’t had those same incidents, we haven’t had the violence here that they’ve had in other places.”
Some Republican candidates, like the governor, have been pitching that argument to voters: Texas held the line when the Biden administration refused to act.
Still, Texas leads the nation in ICE arrests and the number of people detained in immigration facilities, and many Texans feel their lives and businesses have been disrupted.
What’s clear is that Republicans no longer have such a lopsided advantage in the court of public opinion compared to 2024, when Biden’s job approval on immigration was more than 30 points underwater in Texas and 53% of voters said they trusted Trump to do a better job on the issue, compared to 36% for Democrat Kamala Harris.
In the Texas Politics Project’s April survey, Trump maintained a net positive job approval on immigration — 48% to 43% — though more said they “disapprove strongly” than those who said they “approve strongly.” Just 27% of independents gave Trump positive marks on immigration, versus 56% who voice disapproval.
Also at stake is the support of Latino voters, whose rightward shift in 2024, particularly in South Texas, helped Trump carry the state by nearly 14 points.
Some in the GOP have different ideas about which immigration policies might help keep those voters under the party’s tent. Edinburg Rep. Monica De La Cruz, for example, is the only Republican from the state to support a bipartisan immigration reform bill that would create a seven-year pathway to legal status, which is not citizenship, for people who have lived in the country since 2020 and can pass a criminal background check.
The Dignity Act — by Florida Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, a Republican, and El Paso Democratic Rep. Veronica Escobar — would also fund more border personnel and surveillance, increase penalties for illegal crossings and require employers to eventually use E-Verify, the electronic service that checks employees’ immigration status.
De La Cruz, who is preparing to defend her highly competitive Hispanic-majority border district in November, also previously pitched the creation of a special visa for immigrants to work in construction.
But there’s little vocal support for such approaches among De La Cruz’s fellow Republicans, including some in South Texas. State Rep. John Lujan, a San Antonio Republican who is running for Congress against De La Cruz’s brother, was blunt in rebuking the Dignity Act, saying, “I oppose amnesty for any individuals who have broken our immigration laws.”
In North Texas, U.S. Rep. Brandon Gill of Flower Mound slammed the bill as a way of providing “mass amnesty,” arguing it “would constitute a terrible betrayal of our voters.”