Today, Explained - Why both sides fail on immigration

Episode Date: April 18, 2026

Immigration might be President Donald Trump’s signature issue, but what do Americans actually think about border security and enforcement? This show was edited by Kasia Broussalian, fact checked by Esther Gim, mixed by Shannon Mahoney, video edited by Christopher Snyder, and hosted by Astead Herndon. A migrant climbs over the border fence into the US after fetching groceries for other migrants waiting to be processed by authorities on the US-Mexico border. Photo by GUILLERMO ARIAS/AFP via Getty Images. You can also watch this episode on youtube.com/vox. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Transcript at ⁠vox.com/today-explained-podcast.⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

So immigration used to be one of Donald Trump's strongest issues. We're going to have strong borders. We're going to build the wall. But now, not so much. Americans do not like what Donald Trump has done on immigration since he's come back for another term. And that was before I started killing protesters in Minnesota. But take Trump out of it. What do Americans actually think about immigration and border security?

How much are both parties responsible? for the broken immigration system we currently have. And what, if anything, should the next president do to fix it? That's all today on America, actually. Let's begin. This episode is brought to you by Tellus Online Security. Oh, tax season is the worst. You mean hack season?

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to cobblestone streets. Begin your next chapter. Book your seat at westjet.com or call your travel agent. WestJet, where your story takes off. So I'm scheduled to interview Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego in the coming weeks.

He's been talking a lot about border security and immigration. Now, typically, this means I will go off into some corner and write some questions about immigration that I will ask the senator. But I want to do something different. This time I want to ask questions that come from some experts and some friends. Joining me now is Caitlin Diggerson. She's a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter from The Atlantic and my old co-worker at the New York Times. Personally, I think, the best on the issue of immigration. Thank you, Caitlin, for joining us.

Welcome to America, Actually. Thank you for having me. It's an honor. You know, as far as our premise on this show, we want to think about politics without Trump at the center. And I want to do that for immigration. We know that Donald Trump has taken a hard line, a punitive approach to immigration. We know the scenes that we saw in Minneapolis. We know the public opinion has sort of shifted on this issue. But so much of your work is about more than just an individual, but about a system that seemed to have been set up by both parties.

So that's kind of where I wanted to start. And how much of our current immigration system should we ascribe to this one man versus an infrastructure that's been built up over a long period of time? Okay. So obviously there's a lot that is novel that Donald Trump is doing on interior enforcement of our immigration laws right now. But if I think about your question, most of what we're seeing and most of the issues, frankly, that the public is taking with the current system come from many, many presidents ago. So I think you're probably. probably alluding, tell me if I have this right, but to DHS, the creation of DHS, out of 9-11, you could even go back a little bit further. So basically, just going to rush through

it quickly. Give it to me. 1986, we have Ronald Reagan's amnesty policy, and it's intended to give the United States a clean slate. So it offers a pathway to citizenship for most people who'd been living in the United States without status. It was supposed to be paired with border security, and then we get a fresh start. But of course, that never happened because the border remained porous. People continued coming to the United States to work for jobs that largely don't have visas available. But when 9-11 happens, the focus becomes anti-terrorism and anti-terrorism kind of becomes equated or synonymous with immigration enforcement. And so you have this highly funded federal agency that's created, DHS, and then underneath it, I

and law enforcement officers who are told the country's safety is in your hands. You have to protect us from terrorists, but the way that you have to do it is by doing work-a-day immigration enforcement on the ground and deporting people from the United States. Even though the two have really never had that much in common with one another, people working in the United States illegally and anti-terrorism. And so since then, ICE has grown. There have been debates about comprehensive immigration reform to try to, help people who don't have status get it, none of those have succeeded. And so you had this huge population of people who were like sitting ducks when Donald Trump took office. I mean, part of what is striking me from that answer, though, is there was kind of an

accepted fact about a porous border. You're saying before 9-11 and before the kind of anti-terrorism push became one-to-one with interior border enforcement? I think there have always been concerns about our poorest border. Prior to kind of the current political moment that we're in, people in Congress and most presidents have thought the answer to that porous border is to find a way to give people a pathway to legal status so that we know who they are. You know, they have full rights and protections under the laws, but they also are able to fully contribute as legal immigrants. That is the conversation that has fallen away. In May 2025, Trump's immigration advisor Stephen Miller said that he wanted ICE detaining 3,000 people a day. But it also seems

as if the administration has kind of backed off since the public pushback they received in Minnesota. How should we think about those kind of dual actions? Is the worst of the Trump administration's crackdown in the rearview mirror? I think it's way too early to say anything is in the Rio View mirror because immigration enforcement can look so many different ways. I mean, I think what we've seen is this administration recognized that the initial approach that they took, which was all about spectacle, all about aggression in the streets, really welcoming these dramatic clashes between civilians and immigrants and ICE. Bating people in Home Depot's.

That didn't work. But you don't have to do any of that to deport a lot of people. So ICE has massively expanded its partnerships with state and local law enforcement agencies. That's just one of many ways that ICE uses to shuffles. people into this deportation system, deportation machine, as it's been called, and get them out of the country very quickly in a way that we can't see with our eyes, you know, because it starts with routine traffic stop, even someone going in to pay a ticket and then being taken into custody quickly and quietly without news cameras present. What I learned from the first time that Trump was in office is that Stephen Miller's, one of his, you know, greatest passions, you might say, something that he spent a lot of time doing is figuring out, every possible way to deport people and to seal the border. This is somebody who does not see the kind of slowdown that followed backlash in Minneapolis, the necessary slowdown, because the public was so upset with ICE as a failure or as a sign to move on to another issue

or maybe change directions. No. I mean, he sort of gets one no and then finds a way to come up with four or five other yeses. So I think that's very much what he's still doing. shouldn't be seen as necessarily a moderating force, but for someone like Stephen Miller, an obstacle to overcome. Exactly. I wanted to ask about something you just mentioned, because it does seem as if Americans are sometimes fine with deportations as long as they don't see them happening in front of them. And as we both know, President Barack Obama supported more than three million people,

which by some estimates is even more than Donald Trump. Is the lesson here that Americans are against deportations, or are they against them happening? in front of them. I think that Americans are definitely against the kind of violent displays that we've seen in the street from ICE. When it comes to the question of deportation, the answer is more complicated. The polling is really contradictory. And I have really come to see just in the last, you know, in this current Trump term, that I think a lot of that is attributable to the fact that people don't have a baseline understanding of very, very simple aspects of the system. And, you know, perhaps through no fault of their own, politicians haven't done a good job of. explaining it and messaging it, maybe even journalists. But for example, Americans now are really confused because ICE is deporting all of these people who lived in the United States for a long time. And I think many Americans' first reaction to that is, well, they've been here so long. They should have figured out a way to become legal. They don't realize that there is no way for most people living here. And so I think that helps to explain contradictory polling where

if you ask Americans, you know, if someone came to the United States illegally, do you support deporting them, most Americans will say yes. But then if you ask them, but if someone's lived here in the United States for 10 or 15 years, they've never committed a crime, they have U.S. citizen children, or they're an essential worker. Should they be deported, they'll say no. My sense is that people want order at the border. They don't like the idea of having no idea who's coming into the United States at any given time. Or the scenes like we saw in like El Paso and kind of like 2021, 2022, that was kind of universally seen as. is unideal at the minimum.

I want to ask about Senator Ruben Gallego, the Arizona senator, who we're going to interview specific to these questions. And I want to use them as a proxy of where kind of the larger opposition to Donald Trump is on the issue of immigration. Recently, he gave an interview with NBC where he said that a call to abolish ICE were, quote, ridiculous, adding that, quote, we need an immigration force that deportes bad people. We want bad people out. I wanted to ask about that.

I mean, some advocates have said that immigration enforcement. could be handled by a different type of agency. Do we know kind of for the proponents of people who want to abolish ICE what the prospect of where immigration enforcement would go otherwise? Or is he right? That, you know, it's kind of a choice between that or nothing. I think it's sort of two different questions. Do you have immigration enforcement at all or not?

And I think what he's saying is that the public seems to believe in some level of immigration enforcement, which is also my sense. Does ICE have to be the agency to do it? I don't think necessarily, I mean, the criminal justice system is involved in immigration enforcement and could take the lead there. But the idea of, you know, taking this issue away from one of the highest funded law enforcement agencies in the world with, you know, a quarter of a million employees at DHS. I mean, that's a huge shift in reorganization of government that I don't hear very serious conversation. sufficient to actually make that happen. But I think the argument that I do hear most loudly against ICE

is that the agency is kind of rotten at the core because it has this confusing contradictory mission that we talked about, where these officers have been told it's your job to keep the country safe from bad guys, but you're funded like a military and then using that funding and using those weapons and gear to go out and arrest people who are working at car washes and grocery

stores. It would seem as if that kind of tension is at its heart. There is a tension at its heart. Ways of attempting to reform it in the past have completely stalled in Congress, but of course we've seen presidents do it. So the Obama administration in response to criticism of ICE created these enforcement priorities that directed officers against arresting and deporting people who did have criminal records, had strong ties to the United States.

Trump got rid of those priorities in his first administration. Biden put them back into place. Trump got rid of them again. Congress could codify something like that into law. And in fact, you hear Tom Homan himself, Trump's borders are saying this all the time. If the American public isn't happy with what ICE is doing, tell Congress to change the law. Because the law says anyone without status, no matter who they are, is eligible for deportation. Congress has a lot of power over ICE if it chooses to.

to use it. Yeah, abdication of that power we've seen. Another question I'm going to ask is about the Lake and Riley Act, which passed in January 2025. Senator Ruben Giegel was one of several Democratic senators to vote for that bill, which extended mandatory detention for undocumented individuals that were arrested and helped lay the groundwork for some of the expansion of ICE that we're now seeing. Some of the expansion he's now seeking to rein in.

I wanted to ask you about the Lake and Riley Act. How much should we draw a direct line from that bill, which was one of President Trump's first priorities upon returning, to the ramp up of deportation efforts? I think Lake and Riley is really significant. And the fact that Gallego voted for it, as did other swing state Democrats and middle of the road Democrats is really a reflection of the confused kind of lack of position. on immigration that Democrats have shown since the first time Trump became president, they don't really have a clear set of priorities. And you've seen so many prominent Democrats go back and forth between assailing even these basic aspects of immigration enforcement when they're done by Trump that, as you said, have been done under Democratic administrations.

And then at other times, in response to what they perceive to be public opinion turning against immigrants go and vote for very restrictive legislation that makes all these problems they've been complaining about worse. I mean, it definitely feels like the Democrats one principle around immigration is we don't like what Donald Trump does. Yes. I wanted to ask, you know, kind of why you think this has remained broken for so long? I mean, why not fix something?

There are a few different theories as to why Democrats have really not shown leadership on this issue at all. I mean, one is this idea you'll hear Democrats talking about they feel like the party is fighting scared. So Democrats are always susceptible to this criticism that they're soft on crime, that they're open to lawlessness, that they were prioritizing, you know, DEI and people of color over public safety. And so immigration very much falls easily into that kind of easy beating that they can take on a campaign trail and forces Democrats to have to kind or come from a defensive crouch. Come from a defensive crouch and show this ability to. to have a kind of strong man image. But I think another probably more important

and, of course, more cynical issue is it's just politics, right? So Donald Trump saw a very clear upside in focusing on immigration for himself from his earliest campaign rallies. And he smartly intuited, these people are going to show up and vote for me if I keep talking about this.

And he has continued to talk about it. Look at the calculation on the Democratic side. So Democrats aren't sticking their neck out for a population of people who, by nature, cannot vote. Right, right. Cannot vote for them. What's the incentive to bring in a group where the political cost is almost certainly greater than when any potential benefit? And I think not only can this constituency not vote, but Americans generally tend to really underestimate, I think, how interconnected we all are with the immigration system. That is being challenged right now.

What do you mean? Because people are seeing that they personally are affected by this deportation campaign, even if it's not someone in their family who's being arrested because their kid is scared because their kid's friend got arrested or their kid's friend's parent got arrested. Their church, you know, people aren't showing up for church. Their employees aren't showing up for work. Their patrons aren't showing up to buy things from them. So the interconnectedness is becoming more clear now. But generally speaking, I think what holds Democrats back, is if you have two years or four years or maybe six years, you know, depending on how long you might have the advantage in Congress to push forward just a couple of priorities, why are you going to focus on one that Americans tend to think of as for those people over there?

Yep. Not for us. Yeah, yeah. Even if the public is sympathetic to the issue, it's not going to be number one or number two on their list of concerns. You know, Gallego has talked about the need to embrace practical solutions rather than some. something like, you know, the dramatic step of abolishing ICE. I wanted to know from your perspective, someone who's done kind of systemic work, individual work, what is the biggest gap you see in the political conversation about immigration that could

be really tangibly impactful for folks' lives? So actually, something that Gallego has been one of the few people to talk about, I think, is largely absent from the conversation and is pretty key to how stuck we are, which is that we don't have a lot of legal pathways to the United States. and we especially don't have legal pathways to the United States for the jobs that we tend to rely on undocumented workers for. So construction, restaurant work, hospitality, domestic work, these jobs are dominated by immigrant workers, and by and large, do not have visas available to do them. I mean, we now have a couple hundred thousand guest worker visas for agriculture. We have millions of agriculture workers in the United States.

And so he actually has talked at different times about a need for. for legal pathways and balancing that with border security, which I think is smart because historically, when you've seen these attempts at cracking down on the border, they've never been able to overpower the draw on the other side. Yeah. Caitlin, thank you so much for your time, for your expertise. We really appreciate you joining us.

Thank you. Thanks for having me. Up next, we'll talk to a journalist based in Tucson, Arizona, for her insights on her local community and what she would ask, Senator Ruben-Guyah. Stick with us. Maria, you have a podcast now and you need to start acting like it. What's the first step as a podcaster? Well, you have to ask lots of questions.

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But we almost never disagree, and we're always learning. That's true. You can subscribe to the Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app to automatically receive new episodes every Thursday. We're joined by Yana Koonachov, who's a reporter for the Arizona Luminaria,

and is a core member for Report for America, the group that's Stasia reporters all across the country, and is going to be a partner for us here on this show. Thank you, Yanna, for joining us. Glad to be here. I wanted to start from where your work focuses on community resilience, looking at how Arizona's are responding to kind of political impacts or policy impacts from the bottom up rather than the top down.

Can you give me a sense of how Trump's deportation tactics or his immigration crackdown has looked from your perspective in Arizona? Yeah, well, what we've seen is a huge ramp up in arrests and particularly street-level arrests across the state. What that's meant in southern Arizona is that you've kind of had this. resounding response network that's grown out of decades of organizing, but now has a rapid response number. People are going immediately to whenever they hear that there's enforcement happening. You've had school districts that have had to come up with plans for when ICE comes

to their doors. So you've kind of had like a community-wide response that has happened since Trump took office. That sort of sounds like the tactics that we saw be really effective in Minnesota when it comes to public pushback. Is what you're saying that like this is kind of forced a new level of organization or a kind of different, evolved version of community organizing. Yeah, I mean, I think that this region is really interesting because immigration and biculturalism has been like a huge part for generations of this community. It's a border community. I think what is different now is that there's so much more happening for people to respond

to. And also it's a much less dense place than somewhere like Minnesota. So I think people have had to think of tactics that are useful and specific on the ground in like a southwestern country. community, which has been really interesting to watch. Yeah, you point out obviously an important difference is that Arizona is a border state. And I remember that kind of clouding or, I guess, impacting the way people saw, specifically the immigration issue when I was covering it in the 2024 election.

I mean, one of the things we've seen in public opinion data is a difference between people's feelings about border security, which they mostly support and Donald Trump's deportation ramp up, which has been largely unpopular. Have you seen that play out in terms of public opinion? from your perspective? Yeah, I mean, I think that when I was covering the election in 2024, the concerns about border security and people's feelings about what was happening on the border, I think were like really big emotional talking points.

But I think some of the enforcement in the two, specifically Tucson area communities is a lot less abstract. So I think it is really different to feel concern about what might be happening in a bigger level and then like to respond to the fact that you have a neighbor down the street whose father was taken. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Trump has brought politics to them. that may not have been exactly what they expected.

I mean, I wanted to ask kind of in the vein of your last answer, what's the biggest disconnect between the Arizona that you read in the national news, the Arizona that's kind of depicted as a battleground state, and the one that you experience as a resident or reporter? Yeah, and I love that question because I think I don't often recognize the Arizona that I see spoken about nationally. Like, I think there are really deep divisions here politically for sure, but I think the reality is that to live in this place that has... has so many challenges, water challenges, heat challenges. People really have to work together and

have to kind of be in common cause with each other, even if they don't share a political identity. And like, that's what I see so much in all of my reporting. And it makes it a really interesting place to work. And I think answer some of those bigger questions about, like, what is America going to look like moving forward, given the reality of these political divisions? Yeah, I mean, there are certainly places across the country that don't wear their political identity as strongly or as deeply, or it's not the foreground of necessarily how they interact with neighbors. But, I mean, I do want to ask about Arizona's political transition because it's been one that's been sort of drastic. Democrats now hold both Senate seats, the governor's seat.

And there's two Republican-held House seats in Arizona that are going to be a big target for Democrats come 2026 midterms. But at the same time, Republicans have been fairly successful in presidential elections, even Donald Trump in 2024. So like, should we think of this as a red to blue state or a blue emerging state? Yeah, interesting. I think that I think of Arizona, first and foremost, as a libertarian state. People like to be able to feel that they can do what they want with their life. And I think that can play out in different ways. But I think the other thing that's really big in Arizona is just the population is changing here. It's growing here in a way that I don't know if it is everywhere in the U.S. And so I think that the question of what Arizona is is like an actively moving

issue. Yeah, I mean, just because, you know, you mentioned it, I remember being in Arizona for an event called Trump Stock. It was the Woodstock for Trump fans. And I had kind of got my first-hand experience with that libertarian street. Yeah, I mean, I think the other thing about Arizona that I think is interesting, you know, I was recently in an area where there's a number of new mines proposed that was historically a mining region. And there's a number of ranchers that maybe traditionally would have been in favor of those mines, but it's now going to impact their wells and their as to water. So I think the other thing about Arizona is that you are not really, like, insulated essentially from any of like these big picture existential questions where I think

what political leaders think about those can really change. Can you live in your home in 10, 20, 30 years? Fair, fair. I want to, though, ask about the last piece of big data we got about Arizona politics, which is the 2024 election. I mean, Donald Trump's win there seemed to confirm the sign that immigration or security kind of trumped everything else or or came above concerns that even the ones we mentioned. Is that the right read of that win? And how much of a role did something like immigration do you think played in his ability to succeed there? Yeah, I think that to me the two big issues of the 2024 election, one of them did definitely feel like immigration. The other one felt like affordability, which is something that I do think

that the Trump campaign was good at messaging on. Like I went to a rally that said make housing affordable again. When I think of the election, I just also think of people's relationship with democratic politics, democratic politicians in their communities. So I don't think it's all necessarily a pull towards the right only. Yeah, but a drop off from Democrats in the left, too. Yeah, I think that is what I have seen. And I think that I have seen a number of newly elected Democrats in the last year and a half

step up in a way that I think has been really interesting. And I have seen bring energy to people around those individuals. I don't know if that's going to mean a shift to democratic politics. But I do think that has been interesting. Okay, well, let's put immigration to the side. That's something we know we want to ask Senator Gallego about. What are the other issues that have come up in your reporting since 2024 that you think are worth bringing up?

Yeah, I mean, the really big issue here has been data centers. There's two new kind of large-scale data centers proposed for Southern Arizona. They would be the first really big guys in the region, and they have brought together a really big and fast-growing coalition of people to oppose them. Tucson actually voted against bringing in the data center proposed for most nearby. To me, that has made people answer the existential question about resources here, and it has also made people work together that maybe were not otherwise in the same room. Just because the issue has been uniting in people's opposition to it?

Or what do you think is causing that shift together? Yeah, I think it has been uniting in people's opposition. I think people are concerned about what data centers mean for water. I think it has also, you know, I cover local government a lot. I think it has made people think about how they want government to talk to them and share information with them. That was a big issue here, how the data center was brought forward, that people didn't know about it or didn't share about it publicly, kind of earlier in the process.

And so I think it has just made people political actors in a way over the last year that, and I didn't see another issue galvanized people at quite the same level in their relationship with local government. Yeah, I think that's an important point. We'll make a note to make sure that that comes up. But I think it's one of those things where, you know, I kind of empathize with people. We were kind of robbed of an open discussion about AI or data centers or future of work and those things that weren't really front and center of the last. election, but it clearly is front and center in terms of the future of the economy, and it impacts all of our lives. You're saying that's playing out in the more visceral way even over the last

year. Yeah, I mean, I also think Arizona is interesting because two hours away in Phoenix, they have a lot of data centers, a lot of large-scale data centers already, and smaller localities are actually putting in laws to try to slow down their growth. So I think people should always be watching these communities because I think in real time you're seeing people kind of see the consequences of development of growth in an area that is more resource scarce than others and try to respond accordingly with the tools they have. Yeah, that's really helpful. Thank you so much, Anna, for joining us. This was helpful just in terms of understanding the landscape of Arizona, but at the same time, they hold us accountable too and let us know how we do on the interview when we do

talk to Senator Gallego. Yeah, that sounds great. Thanks for listening to today's episode. America actually will be in your feeds every Saturday with an interesting interview in politics or culture. You can also watch these episodes on the Vox YouTube channel. Just go to YouTube.com slash Vox or click the link in the show notes. This show was edited by Kasha Brasolian, fact-checked by Esther Gim and Mixed by Shannon Mahoney. Christopher Snyder is our video editor, and Kuhn Lui is our senior art director. Our executive producer is Christina Vallis, and our theme music is by Breakmaster's Cylinder. Additional support for Miranda, David Tadishore, and Nisha Chita.

I'm Ashton, and this is America Actually.