The first piece of legislation out of the current United States Congress was aimed at detaining illegal immigrants accused of crimes, hot off the heels of President Donald Trump’s election campaign focused on the issue.
Since then, Republicans have introduced multiple bills looking to amend immigration law, focused on known criminals, curtailing sanctuary policies, and enabling deportations. Democrats have countered with legislation aimed at stopping elements of the Trump administration’s policies.
But no lawmaker in either party has tried to re-introduce comprehensive immigration reform, despite Congress coming close to a rewrite of decades-old immigration laws last year, and a clear consensus from voters during the 2024 presidential election that the U.S. immigration system needs major, structural change.
“Trump has taken a record number of executive actions on immigration, but he has not updated U.S. immigration laws, because only Congress can do that, and the U.S. immigration system remains outdated, overwhelmed and under-resourced,” Kathleen Bush-Joseph, policy analyst at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, told Newsweek. “So there absolutely needs to be legislative change.”
A Senator With A Plan
On Monday, Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego, a Democrat, unveiled a 20-page proposal for immigration reform, arguing that the country’s borders could be secured without damaging economic growth. His proposal, which is not technically a bill, includes extra funding and resources for the U.S. Border Patrol, asylum reforms and the expansion of legal immigration routes.
“We don’t have to choose between border security and immigration reform. We can and should do both. Americans deserve the right to feel safe know their border is secure, but for decades, Congress has tried and failed to take action because politics got in the way. It’s time to push forward and enact a plan that works,” Gallego said in a press release.
The proposal is the first comprehensive look at the immigration system since President Trump’s return to the White House — a return that was, at least in part, manifested out of voter anger over dissatisfaction at former President Joe Biden’s immigration policies. It is also the first stab at a sprawling new immigration plan since the so-called bipartisan border bill, which failed in the Senate last year after Trump told Republicans to vote it down.
Newsweek approached Republican Senator James Lankford and Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, who spearheaded the 2024 bill, for comment. Lankford’s office did not respond, while Murphy’s office said he had moved on to other priorities this session.
While illegal border crossings from Mexico into the U.S. are at a near all-time low, experts are cautious on how long it can last without meaningful change codified into law. Border crossings also dipped when Trump took office with a tough immigration stance in 2017, but began climbing again a few months later, building toward the peak recorded in December 2023, under Biden.
A Chance For Action
The last time immigration law was thoroughly overhauled was more than 30 years ago, with the Immigration Act of 1990 — a bill that was mostly aimed at work-based migration. Many other border security policies date back to the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) of 1952, which is still in use — though heavily modified — today.
Andrew Arthur, a resident fellow at the right-leaning Center for Immigration Studies and former Congressional staffer, told Newsweek that the Trump administration and the Republicans on the Hill have the opportunity to end the lull.
“I think the more important thing, regardless of everything that you see, consensus is building on both sides of the aisle,” Arthur said, noting New York City Mayor Eric Adams as an example.
Adams, a Democrat, has become one of Trump’s more vocal surrogates on the issue of immigration, which began when the city welcomed a surge of migrants under Biden with little federal help. (Adams, who was indicted on corruption charges last fall, has since had his case tossed by the Trump administration, which critics suggest was the result of a quid pro quo with the White House related to immigration enforcement. Adams has denied this.)
Gallego writes in his blueprint that Congress’ lack of sweeping actions along with the “inflexible legal immigration system” had allowed a swing back and forth between lax border security and an atmosphere of “chaos and fear” around immigrants.
Trump has said in the past that he is in favor of legal immigration routes and understands that the U.S. relies on immigrant labor in areas such as agriculture and hospitality. Since his return to the White House, however, the focus has been on enforcement – arresting and deporting immigrants in the country without legal status, as well as some who had it.
“The way that things work is that the enforcement agencies CBP and ICE get billions of dollars each year, and that’s what Congress is looking at reinforcing is the structure in which the enforcement aspects get billions of dollars while the adjudication aspects do not and that creates backlogs and therefore incentives that then undermine the enforcement piece,” Bush-Joseph of the Migration Policy Institute, told Newsweek.
“The immigration courts had a budget cut in Fiscal Year 2024, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) has an enormous backlog, even though the Biden administration did make progress on trying to fix that.”
Gallego’s plan includes a recognition that the immigration court system needs a significant increase in resources, in order to clear a lengthy backlog of cases that has held up the Trump administration’s deportation program and left families in limbo for years.
The US Is Not Alone
The Center for Immigration Studies and other right-leaning think tanks have long called for tougher immigration policies, and many were a vocal critic of the Biden administration’s approach over the past four years, which saw millions of illegal crossings and growing unrest at the wave of new arrivals in communities across the U.S.
America is not alone in this situation, with many European countries also having seen large numbers of immigrants arrive over the past decade, sparking backlash from voters in the UK, Germany and France. One of the outliers is Denmark, where Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has listened to voter concerns about the flood of new arrivals.
“Denmark currently has a center left government and a very popular government because it is responsive with respect to immigration,” Arthur said. “In other countries Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Canada, there are tensions between what sort of immigration policy the people want and the policy that they’re getting.”
Arthur said stricter entry and asylum requirements like those Denmark has introduced, and a points-based system similar to those introduced in the UK and Australia, could benefit the U.S. job market while also curtailing large-scale migration.
“I’m not going to say it’s a competition for the best and brightest immigrants, but to a degree it is,” Arthur said. “And we don’t want to be left behind. We don’t want to have our economy stagnate.
“Immigrants are absolutely crucial to the future health of our economy. They bring innovation, they bring labor, they bring capital, and, for that reason, a smart immigration policy is one that is humane, that is open, but that is also premised upon the good of the American people in order to continue to have the goodwill of the constituents for that policy.”
Gallego’s policy plan reflects some of these ideas, similar to how the 2024 Senate bill called for faster asylum processes, an increase in legal immigration numbers and an adaptive border policy which would change based on surges of migrants headed to the U.S.
While the current Congress has looked to add billions in funding for ICE and the Border Patrol, experts on both sides of the debate appear in agreement that the wider system is still in need of reform.
“For decades, America’s immigration system has urgently needed meaningful congressional reform,” American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) executive Director Ben Johnson, said in a statement shared with Newsweek. “AILA applauds Senator Gallego for taking a critical first step with this blueprint.”
But Gallego’s blueprint is just that, at least for now. No bill has been introduced and such sweeping changes would likely need widespread support from his colleagues. Democrats appear unlikely to give Trump a legislative win, while Republicans are focused on a sweeping new budget and tax bill.
Arthur said that it is now down to lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to come together and figure out longer-term fixes despite the differences between the two parties.
“This is so crucial to the American people that I think that bipartisanship is crucial and I think that bipartisan agreement is possible,” he said.
“When I was on Capitol Hill, my bosses negotiated plenty of immigration bills with bipartisan support and I think that we need to return to that on immigration.”
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