As the Democrats attempt to supplant and replace Donald Trump and the Republicans in the 2026 and 2028 elections, lesson number one should be: Don’t counter Trump’s maximalist policies with maximalism of your own on the issues that got the party into trouble in the 2016 and 2024 elections—especially immigration. Unfortunately, California gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer, the frontrunner after Eric Swalwell’s ignominious withdrawal from the race, has not learned this lesson.
Steyer recently issued a position paper on ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and illegal immigration that amounts to a perfect inversion of Trump’s immigration policies. In response to Trump’s deployment of masked agents to progressive jurisdictions to enforce the nation’s immigration laws, Steyer has promised, in effect, to end enforcement of those laws altogether.
“Steyer has promised, in effect, to end enforcement of those laws.”
Echoing the longtime progressive slogan, Steyer calls for ICE to be “abolished.” California, he says, should “build a system that fights fire with fire” by taking on ICE “the same way we took on the mob.” As governor, the hedge fund billionaire promises he will defy the Supreme Court by passing legislation that outlaws any kind of profiling by race, occupation, language, location, or ethnicity. He will also, he claims, “criminally prosecute and imprison not just the ICE agents who are committing [crimes], but the leadership directing them to do so.” Finally, he “will bring those detained and kidnapped by ICE back home” and create “a much larger and stronger immigration legal defense infrastructure in our state—funding for more attorneys, investigators, accredited representatives.”
There are obvious questions of how much of this a governor could really do. Prosecute agents protected by federal immunity? Put ICE’s leadership in jail? Ban practices that the Supreme Court has allowed? But there is a more basic problem with this position paper, one that has afflicted Democrats since the dawn of the Trump era.
Steyer appears unwilling to acknowledge that the United States has duly enacted immigration laws, and that enforcing them requires agencies empowered to carry that out. There is no recognition of that in his position paper. Should the United States abolish the Pentagon because of the disastrous direction of its current leadership? Should it spend money on financing legal representation for the undocumented but not on hiring judges to hear the huge backlog of asylum cases, many of which rest on shaky ground?
In 1994, the campaign for Proposition 187, which sought to deny public services to illegal immigrants, won California Democrats the Hispanic vote for a generation. But what turned the Latino voters to Democrats after that campaign was not their support for illegal immigration, but their opposition to Republican politicians’ xenophobic appeals. Similarly, voters who oppose Trump’s immigration policies for the most part don’t support illegal immigration, nor do they oppose enforcing laws against it. Rather, they object to the way Trump has tried to enforce the laws. By calling to eliminate an agency designed to enforce those laws, Steyer is advocating for policies that—like Joe Biden’s—condone and encourage illegal immigration.
Steyer is not new to this sort of woke maximalism. In 2017, before Trump had even defined his presidency, Steyer was already calling for his impeachment. Trump called Steyer “wacky and unhinged.” He may not have been wrong. In 2018, Steyer helped elevate the candidacy of Tallahassee mayor and impeachment advocate Andrew Gillum over that of frontrunner Gwen Graham, ignoring the fact that Gillum was being investigated for corruption. Steyer’s money helped Gillum win the primary, but cost Democrats the general election to Ron DeSantis, who highlighted the charges against Gillum. That marked Florida’s becoming a deep red state.
Then, in 2019, Steyer ran for president on a platform of declaring a climate emergency on day one and setting the United States on a path to net zero carbon emissions by 2045, a profoundly difficult objective and a political death-wish for Democrats in states that depend on resource extraction.
One might have thought that after the backlash to Biden-era immigration policies, Steyer would have recognized that Americans are seeking moderation and realism. His call to abolish ICE and refusal to acknowledge Americans’ concerns about illegal immigration suggest he has learned nothing. He could still prevail in deep blue California, but with a position paper like this one, his ascension will send a message nationally that the Democrats are still in political denial over their past defeats and are resting their prospects of victory entirely on the greater public dislike of Trump and the Republicans.