Border Policy Unlikely to Change No Matter Who Wins: Ex-DHS Staffer

The rank-and-file civil servants who work for the Department of Homeland Security’s various immigration authorities have little to no hope of real change after November 5, according to a former staffer who worked across the past two administrations.

Both former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have promised immediate action to address border security, as well as legal and illegal immigration. But without Congress, neither are likely to achieve the big goals they are presenting to voters.

Morgan Bailey, who worked within the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) for over a decade, told Newsweek that staffers in that agency are skeptical of either of the candidate’s pitches on immigration.

“It’s been over 40 years that I think that people don’t have any hope that Congress will make any meaningful changes,” Bailey said, referring to the last comprehensive immigration overhaul that ocurred during Ronald Reagan’s presidency.

“There’s just a lot of strong opinions on both sides, so I think it’s unlikely that they’ll be meaningful congressional action, at least within the first couple of years of either administration.”

Presidential powers will not fix the border

Immediate action on issues such as immigration often comes from the president, with both Trump and President Joe Biden having used executive actions to either tighten border security, increase protections for migrants or limit asylum.

The nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute estimated in 2022 that Trump enacted over 470 different administrative changes on immigration during his first term in the White House, including orders to close the U.S.-Mexico border during the COVID-19 pandemic and heavily restrict visa processing.

Biden sought to undo many of these once he entered office in 2021, while introducing others that have expanded protections for undocumented immigrants and those from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, while also restricting crossings at the southwest border.

“Employees have said it’s really tough, to go from one kind of extreme to another,” Bailey said.

“You put your heart and soul into a particular program or a particular approach, and then there’s a significant shift, and sometimes it’s put on hold and sometimes it’s discarded, or revised significantly under a new administration, and that’s a challenge.”

Bailey, who was deputy chief of staff at USCIS from 2017 through 2019 and now works as an attorney, watched morale drop at the agency as it faced budget and staffing cuts during the Trump administration, putting a strain on an already-stretched system.

In fiscal year 2023, USCIS received 10.9 million applications for a variety of visa, green card and citizenship cases. It processed 10 million, but many of those were from its backlog.

Immigration is a defining issue in this election

With election day two weeks away, Trump and Harris have sought to make their positions on immigration clear, with voters consistently rating it a top issue. Still, neither candidate has said much on how they would fix the legal immigration process.

Bailey sees Trump’s message as one wrapped in national security and economic protectionism — with USCIS as a vetting agency — while Harris’ message frames immigrants as an essential part of the U.S. identity who benefit the economy.

Trump has promised mass deportations, a more secure southwest border and the end of the protections enacted by the current president. Harris’ main message on immigration revolves around the reintroduction of the Bipartisan Border Bill, which she blames Trump for killing earlier this year.

Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign’s national press secretary, told Newsweek that current problems with the system can be blamed on Harris’ policies.

“President Trump will work with Congress to restore his effective immigration policies, implement brand new crackdowns that will send shockwaves to all the world’s criminal smugglers, and marshal every federal and state power necessary to institute the largest deportation operation of illegal criminals, drug dealers, and human traffickers in American history,” she said.

Voters have shown equally strong support for mass deportations as they have for increased or improved legal pathways to visas and citizenship.

“I think it’s such a complex issue it’s very difficult to provide a meaningful conversation about all of the intricacies in a sound bite,” Bailey said, adding that campaign messages don’t allow for a detailed conversation about such a complicated system.

Harris’ promise to reintroduce the border bill, which included funding for more border patrol officers and technology, as well as some of the long-awaited reforms for USCIS, could be difficult to fulfill in a divided Congress.

César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, an immigration scholar at Ohio State University, previously told Newsweek that there was no reason to expect meaningful change regardless of who wins the election.

“Congress has had the opportunity to do so, and what we see over and over again is that elected officials view immigration policy as a fantastic political rallying cry,” the professor said.

“And if they were to change immigration law so that folks are actually able to come to the United States lawfully, I think that they would lose the political value that having this issue out there provides them.”

Hernández pointed to Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson’s assessment of the bill in February as “dead on arrival”. The bill ended up failing to pass the House by a vote of 215-199, after Trump stepped in.

Bailey said she would be surprised if the same bill got a new lease of life within the next two years, but added that its more holistic approach to immigration needed to be reflected in how lawmakers speak about the issue before and after election day.

“We certainly do need a strong national security force, we do need a humanitarian aspect, we do need these various components to it, and it’s just understanding that larger picture and getting the right balance of that that is needed.

“I think that a lot of people who work for DHS feel that way as well. They see the value in each of these kinds of emphasis, but it’s just getting that right balance that is important.”

Newsweek reached out to the Harris campaign for comment via email Monday afternoon.