Democrats barely finished toasting their midterm haul before they started working the phones at Donald Trump’s Cabinet for an immigration deal.
Their allies swear the scheme comes with tough border promises attached.
And Laura Ingraham just asked one Trump Cabinet member the question that blows that pitch apart.
A Trump Cabinet Member Cracked the Door Open
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, the former Oklahoma senator Donald Trump tapped to run the department carrying out his deportation agenda, recently told reporters at a counter-drone conference in Maryland that “a lot of Democrats” have reached out about working together in the new Congress.
Then he opened a door nobody in the Republican base asked him to open.
“If we want to have an immigration reform where we can look at DACA and figure out a way that these individuals can become, maybe, legal permanent citizens or something like this, that’ll be up to Congress to do that,” Mullin told Politico. “I’ll be open to talk to anything.”
In the same breath, Mullin swore he’d never sign off on amnesty. “Amnesty is never going to be a solution,” he said. “We’re never going to allow amnesty to happen. So that’s a full stop.”
But permanent legal status for hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens is amnesty. Slapping the label “immigration reform” on it changes the packaging, not the product.
And Mullin’s own department said as much not long ago. A DHS post on X back in March stated flatly that DACA “does not confer any form of legal status.” Now the man running DHS is musing about turning it into a green card.
Mullin said Trump encouraged him to keep talking with the Democrats who call. “The president said, ‘Let’s start working with them and then let’s meet at some point,’” Mullin recounted. He added that he and the President haven’t discussed any change to enforcement policy.
Trump left no doubt where he stands. The White House Rapid Response account posted video of the President declaring, “There’s NO AMNESTY . . . My policy hasn’t changed.”
The base heard Mullin anyway. One widely shared reply summed up the mood in seven words: “Granting permanent legal status IS an amnesty deal.”
Laura Ingraham Asked the Question Mullin Couldn’t Shake
Ingraham took the issue straight to Mullin on Fox News, in a clip journalist Nick Sortor shared on X. She wanted to know why Republicans keep floating immigration deals when Democrats have shown zero interest in enforcing the border, and why DACA of all things should become the party’s message right after an election.
She treated the whole idea as a needless gift to Democrats on the one issue they care about most.
Then she landed the punch that ought to end every one of these conversations.
“Even if there WAS some deal . . . you’re not gonna be in office in 2, 4, 6 years . . . the Democrats WON’T CARE WHAT deal you struck! They’ll open up the flood gates!”
Read that twice. Ingraham didn’t argue about the fine print. She argued that the fine print doesn’t matter, because Democrats will shred the half they don’t like the minute they control the executive branch.
And she’s been down this road before. In January 2018, Ingraham devoted a segment of The Ingraham Angle to what she called “the Durbin-Graham-Flake DACA bill travesty,” warning viewers about what Democrats and their GOP pals wanted to ram through. That deal died. Democrats never stopped shopping it.
Every Border Promise Dies the Day a Democrat Takes the Oath
The pitch never changes. Republicans get enforcement promises. Democrats get legal status.
But only one half of that bargain lasts. A green card doesn’t expire when the White House changes hands, and citizenship can’t get clawed back. Enforcement, on the other hand, lives or dies at the whim of whoever runs DHS.
Joe Biden proved it on January 20, 2021. Within hours of taking the oath, he signed a proclamation ending the national emergency Trump had used to fund the border wall and ordered construction to stop. His Homeland Security Department announced a 100-day moratorium on most deportations and quit enrolling new asylum seekers in Remain in Mexico.
A federal judge in Texas blocked the deportation freeze within a week. But Biden had already sent his message to every smuggler south of the border, and they read it loud and clear.
He also unveiled legislation that same day offering a pathway to citizenship for millions of illegal aliens, with a fast track for DACA recipients. No enforcement trade attached. No wall. Just the giveaway.
So picture the deal Mullin floated. Green cards written into federal law on one side. Tougher enforcement promises on the other, which a future Democrat DHS secretary could gut with one memo on his first afternoon in the office.
Maybe a clever negotiator could bolt enforcement into statute so tightly that no Democrat could wriggle out. Maybe. But a statute only works when someone enforces it, and Biden’s DHS spent four years deciding which immigration laws it felt like honoring.
Hakeem Jeffries Already Showed His Hand
Democrats aren’t even hiding the ball. House Democrat leader Hakeem Jeffries has already sketched out where he wants the talks to start.
“We can begin by moving in the House, and ultimately in the Senate, the Dream and Promise Act in order to restore protection for DACA recipients and TPS recipients,” Jeffries said. “And that should be a foundation for more broader work that can be done together.”
Notice the word “foundation.” DACA isn’t the deal. It’s the down payment.
Jeffries also wants reforming ICE and ending mass deportation folded into the discussion, according to TIME. And one congressional source told the magazine that Trump could prove he’s serious by slowing down or even pausing deportations nationwide.
There’s Ingraham’s warning in black and white, from the Democrats’ own mouths. They want the enforcement apparatus dismantled before the ink on any deal dries.
And the motive isn’t hard to spot. Every amnesty turns illegal aliens into green card holders, green card holders into citizens, and citizens into voters whom Democrats expect to reward the party that handed them status. A bigger electorate tilted their way makes the next amnesty easier to pass, and the one after that.
The American people never asked for any of this. A Cygnal survey of likely voters taken in late January 2026 found Americans backed deporting illegal aliens by 61 percent to 34 percent, nearly two to one.
But the GOP establishment has a habit. Every time Republicans lose a race, somebody in Washington discovers that the answer to the defeat is amnesty, as if voters who sent Trump back to the White House on a promise of mass deportations were secretly pining for a DACA bill.
Democrats will hold both chambers of Congress soon enough. They’ll pass whatever version of the Dream and Promise Act they like, and they’ll dare Republicans to look heartless by saying no.
Ingraham already gave the answer. The deal doesn’t matter if the other side has no intention of keeping it.
Joe Biden took the oath of office at noon on January 20, 2021.
Before that day ended, he’d signed the order halting work on Trump’s wall.
Sources: Politico Pro (Sophia Cai and Myah Ward); Legal Insurrection, “Mullin Signals Openness to DACA Deal as Trump Faces GOP Backlash”; TIME, “Trump Opens the Door to an Immigration Deal. Democrats Want Proof He’s Serious”; CDM, “Mullins Wants DACA ‘Pathway To Citizenship’, Just Don’t Call It Amnesty”; Blabber Buzz, “Mullin Floats Path To Legal Status For DACA Recipients”; VisaVerge; Nick Sortor on X (Fox News clip); Fox News, The Ingraham Angle transcript (January 11, 2018); CBS News, “Biden moves to reverse Trump’s immigration agenda”; American Immigration Council; NYU School of Law immigration policy tracker; Cygnal national poll (January 2026)
