Republicans have hardened their official policies on border security and immigration with a new blueprint for enforcement should President Donald Trump return to the White House in 2025.
An analysis of the 2016 and 2024 Republican National Committee platforms revealed an overhaul between the GOP's views now and then.
GOP allies described the shift in messaging and tougher policies as meant to meet the moment as the country has seen more illegal immigration under President Joe Biden than even any two-term administration.
"It is definitely a reflection of what is happening at the border right now," Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), the chairwoman for the RNC’s platform committee, said in an interview. "Under Joe Biden, you have had about 10 million illegal aliens come into the country, and people are living this.”
Presumptive Republican nominee former President Donald Trump's campaign told the Washington Examiner that the doubling down was a direct response to how the border has fared under Biden.
“Joe Biden’s Border Bloodbath has made it has made it more important than ever to address our border security," Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
Simon Hankinson of the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington said the differences between the two platforms was visible not only in policy priorities but a "clear change of tone and emphasis" that takes a "more urgent, harder line" approach.
"In 2021, Biden immediately undid every one of Trump’s successful border policies using executive orders, with no care for the consequences," Hankinson, senior research fellow at the Border Security and Immigration Center at Heritage, said. "A second Trump administration would bring those policies back, and more besides, to restore control of the border and immigration."
Former Trump White House and campaign surrogate Ford O'Connell said the new platform prioritizes border security and illegal immigration in the top two items of his 20-priority checklist, showing voters exactly what his intentions are.
“The 2016 Republican Platform provided a comprehensive, high-level outline of America First principles," O'Connell wrote in an email. "In contrast, the 2024 GOP Platform presents 20 clear and focused America First policy initiatives that Trump plans to prioritize if re-elected."
The 20 principles include "seal the border, and stop the migrant invasion"; "carry out the largest deportation operation in American history"; and "stop the migrant crime epidemic, demolish the foreign drug cartels, crush gang violence, and lock up violent offenders."
Similarities between the two platforms include building and finishing border wall projects, stopping federal funding to sanctuary cities that do not cooperate with immigration authorities, and vetting and more effectively vetting illegal immigrants released from the border into the country.
It also called for better protections for victims of crimes carried out by illegal immigrants whereas the new proposal calls for a halt on migrant releases into the United States entirely, as well as a stop to “migrant crime.”
The old agenda focused on mandating E-Verify, a federal system that allows employers to ensure new hires are legally allowed to work in the country, as well as reforming guest worker programs. The new plan would end policies that allow family members of immigrants in the U.S. to easily be admitted and prioritize new legal immigration based on skill sets.
David Bier of the libertarian Cato Institute think tank in Washington said some of the policy changes to legal immigration were improvements, but one of the biggest changes was the anti-immigrant sentiment seen generally throughout this year's version.
"The latest platform has nothing positive to say about immigrants," Bier, Cato's director of immigration studies, wrote in an email. "Explicitly saying that they plan to divert funding away from other law enforcement, deprioritizing non-immigration law enforcement, should worry Americans and the personnel in those agencies."
The 2016 platform championed legal immigrants as "making vital contributions in every aspect of national life." It continued on to state that immigrants' "commitment to American values strengthens our economy, enriches our culture, and enables us to better understand and more effectively compete with the rest of the world."
Although the original platform touted the benefits of immigration, the new one made no mention and focused on shutting down the border at all costs, while expanding legal immigration pathways to boost the economy.
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The 2024 platform mentions the word "border" more than two dozen times compared to less than a dozen in the previous one.
The Washington Examiner reached out to the Biden campaign for comment.
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