Trump Can End America’s Immigration Chaos — If Congress Is Forced to Act
Washington treats America’s immigration crisis as if new laws are required, even though the real problem has always been accountability. The truth is simple: we already have laws and a border. For decades, Washington refused to enforce them. President Trump is the first president in a generation to draw that line and enforce the law without blinking, restoring resolve to the Oval Office.
As the 2026 midterms approach, President Trump is in a position no modern president has held, a rare opportunity to permanently fix America’s decades-long immigration dysfunction. This moment did not arise from a policy workaround or legal maneuver. It is the direct result of the collapse of every escape hatch Congress relied on to avoid responsibility. The era of lawmakers outsourcing immigration reform to executive orders, activist courts, and bureaucratic non-enforcement is over.
The failure is clearest with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). After Congress refused to act, the Obama administration created the program by executive action in 2012, granting temporary deportation protection and work permits to certain individuals brought here as children. But DACA lacked congressional approval, permanent legal status, and meaningful enforcement mechanisms to ensure accountability. Democrats used it to justify broad non-enforcement. Republicans used it as an excuse to avoid legislating. Dreamers were left in permanent legal limbo, governed by court orders instead of law. That workaround is now collapsing as courts make clear that executive action is no substitute for statute, with the Fifth Circuit declaring DACA unlawful.
That reality gives President Trump leverage no modern president has ever had. He can credibly say what previous presidents avoided: this cannot be solved by executive orders, memos, or lawsuits anymore. Congress must do its job.
There is also an undeniable collapse of blue-state governance driven by the illegal immigration crisis. For years, Democrats hid behind sanctuary labels and moral slogans, insisting compassion is a policy substitute. This fiction collapsed when bills were due. Cities are now absorbing sharply increased costs across schools, hospitals, housing, and emergency services, forcing cuts to core public services to close widening budget gaps. New York City estimates taxpayers will pay over $10 billion over three fiscal years for the illegal immigration crisis. After spending billions on shelter, food, healthcare, and emergency services for illegal immigrants, the city imposed across-the-board cuts. It is clear that unlimited illegal immigration is unsustainable when even progressive mayors like then-New York City Mayor Eric Adams publicly warned that their cities could not absorb these costs without federal intervention. This strips Democrats of their favorite talking point, that enforcement is unnecessary or cruel. The truth is, disorder is expensive.
This is where the generational opportunity becomes clear. President Trump can force immigration reform back to Congress by refusing new executive workarounds and tying federal funding to legislative action.
The real divide in Washington is whether there is the political courage to fix the illegal immigration crisis created by the Biden administration. After flooding the border with tens of millions of illegals, Democrats are demanding amnesty. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer recently made that explicit, calling for the mass legalization of this population, locking failure into law.
Americans cannot support amnesty under any circumstances. Those who crossed the border illegally under the Biden administration face a clear choice under the Trump administration: voluntary departure or removal. Any other approach permanently destroys the credibility of our immigration system by rewarding lawbreakers and guaranteeing another surge of illegal immigration in the future.
There is a solution if Congress does its job by legislating. Lawmakers should grant DACA recipients’ permanent status, conditioned on proof of long-term residency, clean criminal records, full background checks, and education, work history, or military service. For anyone else who entered illegally under the Biden administration, the only relief should be departure. Immigration reform only works when Congress gets the sequence right and enforces the law.
We have seen Washington get it backward before. In 1986, Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, granting amnesty and legal status to millions of illegal immigrants while promising enforcement would follow. It never did. The message was unmistakable: get in, wait long enough, and legalization will come. Amnesty first, enforcement never, and American communities paid the price.
That history is why order matters now and why the filibuster cannot continue to shield lawmakers from accountability.
This is the real governance test Washington has avoided for decades. Immigration will not be fixed until Congress is forced to act. This is Trump’s once-in-a-generation chance to end the cycle and make reform permanent.
