In 2014, as Central Americans amassed at the border — forcing President Barack Obama to order the detention of thousands of migrant families — former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said of 90,000 unaccompanied minors, “They should be sent back.”
“We have to send a clear message,” Clinton told CNN. “Just because your child gets across the border doesn’t mean the child gets to stay. We don’t want to send a message that is contrary to our laws or will encourage more children to make that dangerous journey.”
In 2005, then Sen. Obama said, “We simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, unchecked and circumventing the line of people who are waiting patiently, diligently and lawfully to become immigrants in this country.”
In his 1995 State of the Union address, President Bill Clinton talked about “abuse of our immigration laws,” the jobs that might go to citizens or legal immigrants, and the burden on taxpayers. Clinton said his administration “moved aggressively to secure our borders more by hiring a record number of new border guards” and “deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before.”
“Trump could have just copied the thing and read it,” Mark Krikorian of the pro-enforcement Center for Immigration Studies said of the Democratic president’s speech.
A year earlier, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., ran for re-election by bashing her Republican opponent for voting against border guards. She opposed Proposition 187, a measure to deny state benefits for undocumented immigrants, because it “makes no provision whatsoever to deport illegal aliens and reduce their number.”
Not just lip service
What changed? Some Democrats came to oppose enforcement as they passed laws to create “sanctuary cities,” and then sanctuary states. Local laws that began as a way to safeguard otherwise law-abiding undocumented immigrants expanded to prohibit law enforcement from cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to deport undocumented immigrants who committed serious crimes in the United States.
Progressives have moved the party so far to the left that a growing number of Democrats now support abolishing ICE.
Language also changed. In 2013, the Associated Press Stylebook directed users not to use the terms “illegal immigrant,” “illegal alien, an illegal, illegals or undocumented” except in direct quotations. The preferred lexicon was to say people who were in the country “illegally.”
When Trump threw his hat into the White House ring in 2015, his language was the opposite of the AP Stylebook — harsh and provocative. Mexico, the country he singled out, was exporting its worst people. “They’re bringing drugs,” he said. “They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
It’s more than fair to call Trump’s 2015 remarks race-baiting and offensive, because they were. But his harsh tone sent the message that he would support enforcement of immigration law. And it wouldn’t just be lip service.
