Why Trump Declared War on Immigrants

Explaining the ideological roots of America First

I’m in The Boston Globe today on the massive shifts towards Democrats among Asians and Hispanics in the recent elections. I’m republishing the essay below. You can either pay for it here or over there.

Republicans took a drubbing at the ballot box on Nov. 4. While things were bad across the board, exit polls in the governor’s election in Virginia showed Hispanic and Asian voters shifting 20 and 42 points, respectively, toward the Democratic gubernatorial candidate relative to the 2024 presidential race — much bigger shifts than either Black or white voters made. In New Jersey, the two counties with the biggest moves toward Democrats happened to be those with the largest concentrations of Hispanics.

It’s unsurprising that this happened. After all, the Trump administration is focused on portraying new arrivals as threats to the country. Headlines have been dominated by ICE raids into local communities that do not want them there; people with legal status getting ripped apart from their families and threatened with deportation for minor crimes or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time; and Venezuelan refugees being shipped off to a brutal prison in El Salvador. Members of the Trump administration and other Republicans have even attacked the H-1B visa program, which brings in tech professionals who often end up creating new jobs and place practically no burden on the larger society in terms of criminality or welfare use.

The real question might be why the Trump administration has been so strongly opposed to nearly all forms of immigration, given its political interest in maintaining the multiracial coalition that delivered Republican victories in 2024. The answer is ideology and gets to the very roots of Trumpism.

I have a unique perspective on this issue, having been involved in conservative circles for the last 16 years. I was a writer for far-right websites years before Trump emerged as a presidential contender, and more recently I contributed to Project 2025. As I’ve come to reject nativist ideas, I’ve seen them spread from a faction within conservative politics to swallowing the whole movement.