Border & Immigration Wonk. Coffee Enthusiast. Senior Fellow @ Searchlight Institute. Former #DHS Deputy Assistant Secretary for Immigration Policy.
Washington, DC
Joined October 2025
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The “why don’t you just” blah blah blah argument is infuriating. “Why don’t you just apply?”
BECAUSE 👏🏽 THAT’S 👏🏽 NOT 👏🏽 HOW 👏🏽 A 👏🏽 BROKEN 👏🏽 IMMIGRATION 👏🏽 SYSTEM 👏🏽 WORKS
This represents a widespread but FALSE belief that there is some process by which well-intentioned undocumented immigrants can just apply to fix their papers.
Such a process DOES NOT EXIST. Paths to legal status are highly limited and conditional. There is no “line” to get in.
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Children. Not murderers. Not criminals. Not the worst of the worst. But f*cking kids.
This is what moral depravity looks like and is exactly what this administration wants. We need to do better.
An 8-year-old Haitian boy who lost Temporary Protected Status earlier this year was taken into federal custody during an immigration check-in, according to local advocates and school officials. abcnews.link/5olj6Gh
Daniel Delgado retweeted
Juicy she lost
The last time someone told a group to “meet me there” at the Capitol it didn’t work out too well for @HawleyMO…
🚨What happened last Tuesday was shocking and historic. It calls for a historic response. Christians need to gather and seek the Lord. I’m going to host a time of fasting and prayer for the nation on Tuesday, December 15 from 12 to 1 at the Capitol. Meet me there!
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As long as Stephen Miller is in the White House, any such deal will be impossible. If the president is serious about striking a deal on legalization, he needs to get rid of the raging white nationalist who he just promoted to chief of staff.
Trump: I think that’s something that’s actually doable.
Q: Doable to create some kind of legal status for the landscapers?
Trump: Yeah. When you go into a hotel and you have a woman that’s worked there as a… You know, as a maid, as a cleaner, as a this, as a that, as a waitress—a lot of good things, great jobs. And all of a sudden, they’re being taken out of the country. It’s tough. It’s a tough thing.
But there’s a group of people that I would say on the sort of pretty far right that would like everybody taken out.
Q: Do any of those people work in your administration? Are they in the building with us right now?
Daniel Delgado retweeted
JD Vance thinks you should have to speak English to receive care at a hospital. Wait until he hears about neonatal intensive care units.
The audacity of those babies expecting care when they don’t even speak the language.
And the American public are sick of it. Time to hold this corrupt administration - and everyone who enabled it - accountable.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) told Fox News that Calley Means, a former Trump White House adviser who quit last month, laid out “in gory detail” concerns about levels of corruption within government, including corruption “within the Trump administration.” wapo.st/4zEL52U
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Daniel Delgado retweeted
Americans spoke loud and clear that they are done with partisan politics. It doesn’t seem like Washington got the message.
To be fair @seanspicer last time it took you all about 64 days after an election to come together and, you know, try to overthrow the government…
Tuesday was not a good night for Republicans
It’s been 4 days and no protests, riots and vandalism..
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It’s one thing to be unaware of the impact your policies are having on voters. It’s a decision to actively ignore the concerns when they’re being yelled from the mountaintops.
I’m told the Trump administration believes the stunning electoral losses last week were largely driven by concerns about the economy, affordability and the war with Iran — not its immigration crackdown.
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Pakistan has not been shy about their disdain for Afghans. That’s why they’ve been actively pushing them back to Afghanistan for years.
Removing our Afghan allies / their families to Pakistan is essentially handing them directly over to the Taliban. More importantly, it’s a betrayal to those who sacrificed so much to help our military.
NEW -- a new TRO from a New York federal Judge effectively allows the Trump administration to move ahead with deportations of Afghans to Pakistan. A new stay blocks the deportation of 5 individuals, which could be expanded if a class is established. courtlistener.com/docket/750…
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There’s arguably nobody who has played a greater role in Trump’s failed domestic policies than Miller, including, most significantly, the same immigration policies that voters - especially Latinos - forcefully rejected on Tuesday.
So what do you do to somebody after they cost you an election? Promote them, I guess.
Breaking News: Stephen Miller, the architect of President Trump’s mass deportation effort, will become White House chief of staff, replacing Susie Wiles, President Trump said. nyti.ms/4AieWy5
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Important to note, yet unsurprising. There are fewer things that will upset #CBP and #ICE LEOs than being forced to work alongside people who don’t value and respect the work. That includes untrained agents/officers just as much as it does political leadership.
👀 Post-election text from tenured ICE source
This source and others have lamented to me that the new hires have inadequate training and being assigned to the field with rookies is a liability for experienced officers.
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Two thirds of Latinos believe Trump’s immigration enforcement has gone too far with many of his 2024 supporters having been directly impacted by these indiscriminate attacks on our community.
However, this doesn’t mean that Latinos voted for Democrats as much as they were simply voting against Trump. Now @TheDemocrats have to back up their promises.
Allentown Mayor Matt Tuerk, a Latino Democrat, perfectly sums it up. “They saw betrayal from Trump after they gave him a chance in 2024 and they went with the Democrats. They’re giving them a chance now, but they’re on probation.”
Latino voters moved sharply to the left in the midterms, propelling Democrats to big wins in Texas and nationwide.
It’s a remarkable pivot for a demographic that had shifted toward President Trump just two years ago. apnews.com/article/latino-vo…
The president continues to prioritize policies meant to benefit the American public. For example **checks notes** signing meaningless proclamations to protect his interior design choices…
President Trump signed a proclamation on Thursday aiming to prevent future presidents from making major changes to the Oval Office and the Cabinet Room.
Read more: abcnews.link/keQ9EeM
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Less than 24 hours after Americans voters forcefully rejected the administration’s failed policies, JD Vance is already breaking with POTUS in an attempt to chart his own path forward.
Happy start of the 2028 election cycle!
One of the things the data analysts on our side obsessed over was "composition"—whether the electorate looked close enough to 2024 for Republicans to win. And despite polls that showed a Democrat blowout, the data kept on telling us the same story: in some states turnout was merely OK, in other states it was downright amazing, and in no state was it catastrophic. There was a genuine sense of optimism on our team: our people were showing up.
So, I asked the smartest data guy I know, does that mean we're going to shock the world? "No," he told me. "We might do better than the polls suggest. But the data is telling us that a lot of Trump/Vance 2024 voters are pissed and planning to vote for the other guys. Our voters are turning out, but they may not vote for us."
Well, that looks prophetic now. Our voters did show up. In Florida, for example, the electorate was 9 points more Republican than Democrat, just a couple points worse than 2024. Undoubtedly there were places we could have done better on turnout. But the main problem is not turnout. The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026.
There will be a lot of infighting and arguing over what happened and why that is. One of the pollsters I really respect told me that our economic messaging wasn’t sharp enough down the stretch. I’m sure that’s true.
But the real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone.
Another pollster—one of the smartest people I know in politics, told me yesterday we’d lose the generic ballot by 13 points. I felt negative going into Tuesday, but even I was shocked by this. In his polling, he saw that a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats. He asked those voters who had abandoned us what would cause them to come back on our team. The top four answers, accounting for nearly all of the responses were:
1) End the war
2) Focus on cost of living/inflation
3) Put America First
4) Change our relationship to Israel
Our voters showed up. And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats. This is according to a pollster who nailed the results. While many spent Monday attacking Rachel Campos Duffy for calling for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, it turns out her political advice was sound. (She’s also a great person.)
In the next few months, there's going to be a lot of gaslighting. Expect to hear any number of establishment politicians say the solution to our woes is amnesty. I'm open to the idea that we should change enforcement—by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor, for instance. But anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you.
The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night.
If you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that's at least honest.
But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there.
I remain hopeful about our country. To the people who are pissed off and want to say, “I told you so”: you’re right, you did tell us so. Take that energy into electing Republicans who share your worldview. To the people who are just pissed at the results, you should be. Let’s take that anger and get back to the work of saving our country.
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