DALLAS — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott was already busing migrants from the border to New York when he picked a new northern target in 2022 — Chicago, another destination chosen because it was run by Democrats.
Chicago was not prepared for the heavy influx of people in need, and the resources required to care for the newcomers set off a contentious debate over whether the city should help migrants or its own needy residents.
Abbott’s actions forced residents in cities far from the southern border to focus on immigration. With border security a top national issue, president-elect Donald Trump was propelled again to the White House and the GOP’s performance improved in Democratic strongholds.
“It was kind of a stroke of genius from the vantage point of Republican strategists,” said Cedric Johnson, a political science professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago. “It actually drove a wedge between different communities here in Chicago. … It sparked a lot of misinformation about what was happening. It also sparked a lot of anti-immigrant fervor.”
The migrant issue also paid political dividends in unexpected places.
Vice President Kamala Harris beat Trump in Illinois by 9 percentage points, well behind the 17-point victories by Joe Biden in 2020 and Hilary Clinton in 2016. In New York, where Abbott also sent migrants, Harris won by 12 points, a closer margin than Biden’s 23-point win and Clinton’s 21-point triumph in the reliably blue Empire State.
Johnson said Abbott created a heightened focus on immigration that helped Trump in Illinois.
“You can draw a connection between the crisis here on the ground and those persons who decided to support Trump based on his claims about what he’s going to do for immigration,” Johnson said. “The busing of migrants here just primed the pump for this presidential election, and Trump certainly benefited from the sentiment that was kicked up here in the city.”
After helping to put a national focus on immigration and border security, Abbott is faced with the post-election aftermath.
Trump has pledged the largest mass deportation in American history, a move that would threaten to uproot nearly 2 million people who are in Texas without authorization.
For Abbott, mass deportation would be a tricky political proposition. Immigrant advocates fear large-scale deportations would cause significant disruptions by separating families and returning migrants to their original country after long absences.
The robust Texas economy could also suffer, as many businesses rely on immigrant labor.
“The only real way you can approach mass deportation would have to be through raids,” said Dallas immigration lawyer and Southern Methodist University political scientist Eric Cedillo.
The economy also would suffer as workers are deported and replacements discouraged from coming to the U.S. to work, Cedillo said.
“It’s going to cause and strike fear across the immigrant communities, and people just aren’t going to come and do the work that they’ve done for years,” he said.
“When you talk about deporting millions, that is a very, very bad thing for the economy on many levels,” Cedillo added. “They’re talking about mass deportations between 11 to 13 million people. Even approaching that … is going to cost hundreds of billions of dollars.”
Texas Republicans are riding high after Tuesday’s elections. Trump beat Harris here by 14 percentage points, while Sen. Ted Cruz won reelection, beating U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, D-Dallas, by nearly 9 points.
Republicans also scored victories in statewide races, including the Supreme Court and Court of Criminal Appeals, and added two seats in the Texas House and one seat in the state Senate.
The next election test is in 2026, when Abbott and other statewide officials are up for election. Last week, Republicans made tremendous gains with Latino voters as Trump won nearly every county in South Texas.
Tuesday’s election results made it clear many Hispanic and non-Hispanic voters are not bothered by Republican border security policies or rhetoric.
Mass deportations of people not wanted for crimes or with criminal records, however, could be a bridge too far.
“It would be political suicide for the Trump administration to actively engage in a mass deportation,” said Rice University political scientist Mark Jones, who follows Texas politics. “The most powerful impact would be that you would be separating undocumented parents from their American children, and just the imagery of it would be controversial. It would be a public relations nightmare for the Trump administration.”
Jones said the political impact of a true mass deportation effort also would hurt Texas Republicans.
“That would create a real uphill struggle for Abbott, that if you couple that with an economic decline or other Trump errors, you suddenly take a situation where there’s Republican euphoria over the 2024 elections to a situation where Abbott has to actually work really hard to win in 2026.”
Whether Abbott agrees with Trump’s plan is unclear. He said last week Trump would begin deportations in phases, starting with dangerous criminals, an approach he supports.
“The last thing they should be doing is roaming the streets, like what Kamala Harris and Joe Biden have allowed them to do,” Abbott said during a news conference in Tyler. “If you are a danger to people in Tyler, or people in Dallas or wherever you may be in our country, you should be off the streets, behind bars and sent back to the country from which you came.”
The governor didn’t provide a clear answer on whether he supported Trump’s promise to find and deport immigrants who are in the country without authorization but are otherwise obeying the law.
“President Trump has made perfectly clear that this is a process, and you have to have a priority list,” Abbott said. “His priority list is that you begin with the criminals. He said after he gets done with that, he’ll look elsewhere.”
Abbott said Republicans are on the right track with South Texas voters.
“You see those border counties? Only three were blue,” Abbott said. “Most of the border counties are overwhelmingly Hispanic, and they are tired of the crazy open border policies that Biden and Harris allowed.”
It’s unlikely many Texas Republicans want to mess with Tuesday night’s success, but the final decision is Trump’s. It’s his party.
©2024 The Dallas Morning News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
