DeSantis, Not Trump, Is the GOP's Best Bet on Immigration | Opinion

In a shocking reversal of its own immigration policy, the Biden administration has quietly announced that it will waive nearly 30 federal laws to continue construction of the border wall in southern Texas. During the 2020 presidential campaign, Joe Biden swore his administration would not build "another foot of wall." Now, nearly four years into his presidency and after millions of illegal immigrants have entered the country, Biden is apparently convinced that the influx of migrants at the southern border is unsustainable. Biden will now build the wall.

Republicans will likely cheer this news—many already have. But the fact is, the country would not have needed Biden to build the wall if former President Donald Trump had not violated the central promise of his 2016 campaign, which was his pledge to build a wall on the United States' southern border and force Mexico to pay for it.

Despite running and winning on immigration, Trump famously failed on both counts: He left office having built just around 50 miles of new wall, without a single Mexican peso contributed.

Nearly eight years later, immigration still remains a top issue for voters. According to the latest Harvard-Harris Poll, 24 percent of voters think immigration is the most important issue facing the country, behind only inflation and the economy.

This is no doubt the reason for President Biden's pivot. But the lesson here not just for the Democrats. As long as immigration continues to be a key issue in the 2024 presidential election—and it will be—then it's clear Trump is far from the best choice on this issue for Republican voters.

The best candidate is the only one with a proven record of following through on his immigration promises: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

As a congressman in 2018, DeSantis voted against a bill that would have granted amnesty to millions of illegal immigrant DACA recipients—a bill that Trump was pushing House Republicans to support. As governor, DeSantis enacted anti-illegal immigration legislation that mandated e-Verify, created penalties for employers who hired illegal immigrants, and outlawed identification cards for illegal immigrants. And unlike Trump, DeSantis actually sent migrants to sanctuary cities—something Trump talked about doing, but never did.

This inability to follow through on his rhetoric was the norm, not the exception. Trump's entire record on immigration is filled with excuses and dishonesty.

At a rally in Iowa over the weekend, Trump claimed he couldn't get Mexico to pay for the wall because there "was no legal mechanism" to do so. It was a strange claim for someone who campaigned on just the opposite in 2016.

Trump used to argue he could get Mexico to pay for the wall by taxing remittances—cash payments that Mexican nationals living in the U.S. send back home. In 2022, Mexican remittances from the United States totaled nearly $60 billion dollars, accounting for nearly 5 percent of Mexico's GDP.

Though Trump has seemingly abandoned taxing remittances, DeSantis has not: In a recent tweet, DeSantis promised to fulfill Trump's remittance pledge and force Mexico to pay for the wall.

Trump excuses the fact that he never got Mexico to pay for the wall by taking credit for the Mexican government's deployment of 20,000 troops along its own borders, as if that's somehow the same thing as funding the wall's construction. He's also spent the last year arguing that he did in fact complete the wall. When he announced his reelection bid at Mar-A-Lago last fall, he falsely said "we built the wall. We completed the wall." He told CNN in May that he "did finish the wall."

So how long is this "completed" wall? In a recent interview with Megyn Kelly, Trump cited 500 miles of built wall. When Kelly pointed out only 50 of those 500 miles was actually new wall, Trump argued that a majority of the wall was wrongly counted as "renovations."

Somehow "Renovate the Wall!" just doesn't have the same ring to it as "Build the Wall!"

More importantly, if Trump truly completed the wall, how have record numbers of illegal immigrants entered our country since he left office?

According to Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), since Trump left office there have officially been over six million illegal immigrants who've crossed the southern border, in no small part thanks to Trump's failure to build the wall. The real number is likely far greater, as CBP figures only include illegal immigrants that are caught.

Trump's own record on illegal migrant crossings also isn't as great as he claims, even though he and his surrogates frequently claim he had the "strongest border in history."

During Trump's presidency, CBP recorded over two million illegal immigrant crossings. The number of crossings increased every year of his presidency, before declining during the COVID pandemic. February 2019 saw a record number of illegal migrant crossings at the southern border, and was the highest number in a dozen years.

Trump's immigration failures also go beyond illegal crossings and the wall. In a blatant flip-flop, Trump extended deportation protections (and thus granted de facto amnesty) to millions of illegal immigrants by granting extensions to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) recipients in 2020 and by extending Temporary Protected Status to 200,000 Salvadorans in 2019. Just days after the Supreme Court struck down his own prior attempts to end DACA, Trump told Telemundo he would give DACA recipients a "road to citizenship."

This is the story of Trump's term. Not only did Trump renege on many of his pledges, but he often even took the complete opposite view from what he campaigned on in 2016.

America can't afford another president who will break his promises on immigration, who will let millions of illegal immigrants enter the country, and who will push Congress to support amnesty. Results are more important than rhetoric.

Another term of Trump or Biden immigration levels and the country's descent into a third-world slum will be all but guaranteed. If Republican primary voters truly care about immigration and the future of the country, then DeSantis, not Trump, should be the nominee in 2024.

Eduardo Neret is a conservative writer and media strategist.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.