The caravan working toward the U.S. border from Central America allows the president to argue that his opponents have failed to tackle illegal immigration, and presents an opportunity to rev up his base. | Orlando Estrada/AFP/Getty Images White House Why Trump is talking nonstop about the migrant caravan Republicans saw immigration as a winning midterm rallying cry, and the Central American caravan hitting cable TV created an opening for the president.

Earlier this month, President Donald Trump’s political team reviewed polling from congressional districts that were competitive in the 2016 election. They showed that border protection, safeguarding immigration officers and standing up to illegal immigration resonated with voters there, according to a person with knowledge of the president’s strategy.

The president seized on the issues as winners for Republicans attempting to preserve their congressional majority.


Trump has since found the perfect opening with a migrant caravan snaking up through Central America toward the U.S. border — and hitting his favorite cable news TV shows. And now the president is talking and tweeting nonstop about the caravan, hoping his strategy will pay off in the final two weeks before Election Day.

"The Democrats don't care what their extremist immigration agenda will do to your neighborhoods or your hospitals or your schools," Trump said at a rally Monday night in Houston. "They don't care that the mass illegal immigration will totally bankrupt our country."

“Every time you see a Caravan,” he tweeted earlier Monday, “or people illegally coming, or attempting to come, into our Country illegally, think of and blame the Democrats for not giving us the votes to change our pathetic Immigration Laws! Remember the Midterms!”

In pressing the issue, Trump sees a twofold advantage. It’s a way to argue that his opponents have “turned a blind eye to the problem,” as one Republican working on the strategy put it, and also an opportunity to rev up his base.

Although Democrats remain strongly favored to win back the House, overhead TV pictures of thousands marching north have them spooked. Asked if the timing worried him, a national Democratic strategist said, “in the Senate, yes.”

Even before the caravan, most congressional Democrats saw immigration as a loser for them. “It is very difficult to win on immigration with vulnerable voters in the states Trump carried in 2016,” advised a memo circulated among Democratic congressional offices in recent weeks and prepared by the centrist Third Way and liberal Center for American Progress. “Even the most draconian of Republican policies, like family separation and deporting Dreamers” persuaded relatively few of those polled to vote Democratic, said the memo, which was first reported in The New York Times.

“Democrats should spend as little time as possible engaging in a conversation about the merits of sanctuary cities,” the memo advised, “and instead pivot to other issues like taxes and health care, where Democrats have significant advantages.”

An October poll by the Pew Research Center found 75 percent of Republican voters considered illegal immigration a “very big” problem. By comparison, only 19 percent of Democrats felt the same way. The overall percentage of voters who labeled immigration a major issue tracked closely with the level in the weeks before the 2016 presidential election, according to Pew data.

On Monday, Trump unleashed an explosion of immigration-focused statements, warning on Twitter that he may deploy the military to the border and threatening to cut off aid to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

Honduran migrants aboard a truck take part in a caravan heading to the U.S., in the outskirts of Tapachula, on their way to Huixtla, Chiapas state, Mexico, on Monday. | Pedro Pardo/AFP/Getty Images

After a boost during the Obama administration, U.S. foreign aid to these three countries has steadily declined in recent years, from $700 million in fiscal year 2017 to $615 million in fiscal 2018. The Senate and House have proposed $515 million and $595 million respectively for the coming fiscal year. The White House requested just $435 million.

On Monday in Houston, Trump suggested — without evidence — that Democrats had something to do with the migrant caravan. “And now they're saying, ‘I think we made a big mistake,” the president said of Democrats. He accused “bad people” of starting the caravan and “very bad people” of being part of it.

“This is something that’s definitely going to benefit Republicans running in tight districts,” said GOP strategist Shermichael Singleton. The law-and-order message has “an intrinsic value to Republican voters,” he said, and could resonate with independent men. “You look at those folks in the middle to make the difference,” he said.

Senate races in Texas, Arizona and Nevada have all seen immigration emerge as a major theme among Republicans. Trump was in Houston Monday night to campaign for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in his reelection campaign against Rep. Beto O'Rourke (D-Texas).

Trump himself believes the caravan images are so politically potent for Republicans and so damaging for Democrats, people who have spoken with him about the approach said that he’s vowed to bring up the caravan wherever and whenever he can, even when he isn’t being prompted by others. “There is now video on TV screens that matches the feeling on the ground that the president has felt for the past three years,” said a person familiar with the polling reviewed by Trump's team.

Republicans have come to believe that any time the immigration issue becomes about the border and border security — rather than immigrant "Dreamers" or a mix of more complex related topics — it’s a victory for them. “The vast majority of Americans worry that our border isn’t secure, and that criminals, gangs and drugs are coming into the country across the border — and the images of this mass of people basically tearing down fences to enter Mexico only reinforce those concerns,” said GOP pollster Chris Wilson.

Immigration advocates argue that Trump and Republicans aim to “divide and distract” the electorate by focusing on contentious immigration issues.

Navin Nayak, executive director of the liberal Center for American Progress Action Fund, said his group long anticipated Republicans would turn to immigration before the midterms, “knowing that they have nothing else to run on.”

“Republicans have failed on this issue,” Nayak said. “They’ve had complete control and done nothing to address a broken immigration system.”

Whether any real crisis exists at the border remains a matter of considerable debate. Although the caravan is larger than the one that caught Trump's attention last spring — by some reports it’s swollen to 7,000 people — overall arrests at the U.S.-Mexico border remain well below their level in recent years.

In fiscal year 2018, Border Patrol arrested approximately 397,000 people at the southwest border, according to data obtained by POLITICO. From fiscal 2009 to 2016 — the bulk of the Obama presidency — the agency arrested a yearly average of roughly 413,000 people. From the 1980s through the early 2000s, the annual tally of arrests routinely eclipsed 1 million.

The number of arrests fell to roughly 304,000 during Trump’s first year in office, when illegal crossings appeared to dry up amid uncertainty about the new administration. But that was more aberration than the norm.

The flow of migrants has shifted over time away from Mexico and toward families and children from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Border Patrol arrested roughly 16,500 family members in September — the highest monthly total on record.

There’s little evidence that U.S. policy has had much effect on immigration flows over the years. Eric Olson, deputy director of the Wilson Center’s Latin American Program, said he doubted that more enforcement measures — including Trump’s threat to send the military to the border — will make much of a difference.

“Everything that’s been tried, all the tough talk, all the tough policies … it seems to have very limited impact,” he said.

“People are moving because conditions are miserable in Honduras and other parts of the Northern Triangle,” explained Duncan Wood, director of the Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute.

Theresa Cardinal Brown, director of immigration policy for the Bipartisan Policy Center, said poverty and violence, combined with the publicity from the last caravan in April, appears to have driven up the number of migrants trekking to the U.S. in this group.

“It’s not an armed invasion,” she said. “They’re not coming to overthrow us.”