The reckoning that awaits the Democrats in 2028
How Democrats’ fear of enforcing the law led us to this point.
At 5 a.m. on a cold January morning, Johana Gutierrez and Salvador Alfaro were awakened by the pounding on the front door, flashlights cutting through their windows and voices shouting from outside. Their children and relatives slept inside. A few minutes later, armed men appeared in their living room.
The children, still in their pajamas, cried and shook as officers searched the house room by room — the bedrooms, the kitchen, the laundry room and even the garage. When Gutierrez picked up her phone, she was told not to move. When she offered to identify herself, an officer put his hand on his gun. She was threatened with arrest.
There was no court order. No emergency. The officers had gotten in by deception.
DEMOCRATIC SENATOR CALLS OUT PARTY ‘BULL—-‘ FOR SAID TO SECURE BORDER.
By the time they left, a mother and her 10-year-old son had disappeared and been taken to a detention center in unmarked cars.
This was not Donald Trump’s America. It was from Barack Obama.
The raid was part of a 2016 ICE operation in which 121 people — mostly mothers and children — were detained with permanent deportation orders. The ACLU called it “a travesty of due process.” Within the Democratic Party, scenes like this left a lasting scar.
They also left behind a political myth: that Obama-era immigration enforcement was mild, subdued or fundamentally different from what came before or after.
THE SUPREME COURT GIVES PRESIDENT TRUMP A GRAND OPENING ON IMMIGRATION
It wasn’t.
Obama never said enforcement was painless. “As long as the current laws are on the books,” he said in a speech in El Paso in 2011, “it is not just hardened criminals who need to be removed, but sometimes families… or decent people with the best intentions. We don’t enjoy the pain this causes.’
He did not capitulate to interest groups or activists despite their criticism. He doubled down and enforced the law anyway.
Tom Homan – now Trump’s border czar – carried out deportation operations under Obama. He received one of the highest administration honors from Obama’s DHS for removals that were described as “impressive and far-reaching in scope.” Obama didn’t just inherit the machinery of ICE. He modernized it, expanded it and made it more effective.
Trump did not invent aggressive domestic enforcement. Trump 1.0 exploited it – and weaponized it – adding cruelty, chaos and family separation to a system that already existed.
Within the Democratic Party, however, Obama’s record became radioactive. ‘Deporter-in-Chief’ wasn’t just a nickname. It was a warning label for anyone running for president in 2020.
JONATHAN TURLEY: DEMOCRATIC POLITICIANS RISE LIVES WITH Reckless Anti-Ice Rhetoric
And Joe Biden paid the price.
I saw it up close. Our campaign was hyper-sensitive – sometimes paralyzed – around immigration. Whenever the issue came up, Biden and Dr. Jill Biden humanity, restraint and decency. The message was clear: Biden would not be Trump. And he wouldn’t be Obama either.
In 1988, when George HW Bush promised a “kinder and gentler America,” Nancy Reagan famously turned to the person next to her and asked, “Kinder than who?” In 2020, our campaign answered this question preemptively.
DEM SENATOR WARNER ADMITS BIDEN HAS ‘BROKEN THE BORDER’ BUT CLAIMS ICE IS NOW TARGETING NON-CRIMINALS
But in the White House, the rhetoric became policy. And the policy became a catastrophe.
Biden’s hypercorrection, away from the enforcement models of both Trump and Obama, produced one of the most serious political and governance failures of his presidency. By dismantling deterrence, limiting enforcement, and signaling withdrawal, our government has helped create the conditions for a system-wide collapse and ultimately Trump’s return to power.
Biden did not cause global instability, regional violence or economic despair. But he did choose to govern in a way that prioritized intra-party accommodation and reassurance over systemic credibility. And once credibility is gone, it is extremely difficult to restore it.
For nearly two decades, Democrats have been embroiled in a civil war over enforcement. We pretend that the argument is about compassion versus cruelty. That’s not it. The point is whether a government party can say out loud that enforcement is not a moral failure, but a condition for a functioning system.
Both Obama and Biden knew the truth: There is no executive solution to America’s immigration problem. It is not without reason that we still operate under a law from 1986. Legislation is needed to solve this. Legislation requires cooperation and compromise. And compromises are difficult.
Instead, Democrats have turned ICE into a moral proxy war.
Not, “How should it be reformed?” Not, “What should the mission be?” But a loyalty test: are you in favor of abolishing it? Or are you willing to finance this?
Every credit cycle now becomes a ritual of self-flagellation. Funding ICE is treated as moral surrender. Defunding it is considered a virtue. The result is a party that often cannot say clearly and honestly whether it believes its own laws should be enforced at all.
So every Democratic president ends up in the same vice.
If you enforce the law, you risk rebellion within your own coalition. If you don’t enforce it, the system will collapse – and you will be punished by the voters.
Obama opted for enforcement and paid a reputational price within the party.
Biden chose housing and paid an administrative and political price.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS ADVICE
Bad policy is bad politics.
The truth – uncomfortable but unavoidable – is that a country cannot function without credible enforcement. No theatrical enforcement. No arbitrary enforcement. But visible, consistent, legitimate enforcement.
Borders without borders are not compassionate. They are fictional.
“Abolish ICE,” like “Defund the Police,” was never a serious government proposal. It was a signal – a sign of moral identity. And like “Defund the Police,” it produced the very things that moral attitudes so often cause: confusion, backlash, and political self-harm.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
Obama understood something that our party still struggles to say clearly: America is a nation of immigrants, and it is also a nation of laws. These two ideas are not in tension. They depend on each other.
Until Democrats stop treating enforcement as a moral sin and start treating it as a managerial responsibility, we will continue to oscillate between virtue signaling and harm reduction. And future candidates — the 2028 Democrats — will continue to pay the price for a debate the party is still too afraid to conclude.
CLICK HERE TO FROM MICHAEL LAROSA
