Election voters rebuked Trump. What will it mean for the immigration crackdown in San Diego?

Democrats are still celebrating major gains in this year’s midterm elections, in which the party’s switch from the minority to control of Congress is being seen as a sharp rebuke to President Donald Trump and his policies over the last two years. 

Republicans at the highest levels are reckoning with steep losses and voter disapproval of the president’s actions on signature issues, including his unprecedented crackdown on immigration. Friday, Trump named Stephen Miller, architect of some of his most controversial immigration policies, White House chief of staff.

Earlier in the week, on a phone call with Fox News late Election Day, Trump suggested there was room to work with Democrats on his deportation agenda while also emphasizing his power to veto legislation passed by Congress. 

“I can work with them on a lot of things,” Trump said. “We can work with them on immigration, I think.”

Vice President JD Vance wrote in a post on X the next day that he was “open” to changing immigration enforcement “by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor, for instance” but dismissed the idea of amnesty for immigrants. 

Just two years earlier, voters brought Trump back into office in part on his promise to carry out a historic deportation campaign targeting the “the worst of the worst.” 

What voters got was an aggressive surge of federal agents across the U.S. who at times violently detained immigrants, stormed communities wearing weapons and battle fatigues and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis who protested their actions. Most of those who have been arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement under Trump have no criminal record. 

Democrats, heeding broad pushback from voters on Trump’s immigration crackdown, are looking to dial it down and hold oversight hearings into the administration’s top officials. 

As a new reality sinks in around Washington D.C., San Diego congressional members, policy experts and immigration advocates are already planning and hoping for big changes to come in January. 

Here’s what they want to happen in the next couple years. 

Congressional investigations 

Some Democrats are already making a list of former and current Homeland Security officials they plan to bring forward to Congress for testimony and investigations. 

Among those names: Miller, Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, current Secretary Markwayne Mullin, Border Czar Tom Homan and former U.S. Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino. 

U.S. Rep. Scott Peters, D-San Diego, who represents California’s 50th Congressional District, was easily reelected to an eighth two-year term Tuesday. He said he wants to ask officials about their plans for immigration enforcement, their expenditure of agency funds, which reached historic levels in Trump’s second term, and “people getting killed in the streets.” 

Three U.S. citizens have been shot and killed by federal agents conducting immigration enforcement during the second Trump administration — Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis and Ruben Ray Martinez in Texas. Dozens of immigrants have died in detention centers and some in communities during interactions with federal law enforcement in that time.

Hollie Webb, an attorney with the binational San Diego-based immigrant rights legal group Al Otro Lado, said third-country deportations should be investigated as well. 

Early in Trump’s second term, his administration deported more than 250 men, most from Venezuela, to a high-security prison in El Salvador, where they were reportedly tortured. The administration has also sent immigrants to far-flung countries where they have little or no connections, including Uzbekistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Paraguay. 

Others said Congress should be judicious with its investigations. 

U.S. Rep. Juan Vargas, D-San Diego, who represents California’s 52nd Congressional District and won an eighth term Tuesday, said he supports oversight, but not “vengeance.” He said the next Congress should make legislation a priority. 

“We do have to have oversight, absolutely, but we have to fix this,” Vargas said. “That’s what I think the American people want to see. They want to see us fix this, not retribution.” 

‘Commonsense’ legislation 

Immigration advocates like Lilian Serrano, who leads the Southern Border Communities Coalition, are ready to have Congress do more than just investigate.

“What we want to see is them actually doing what Congress is meant to do and change the laws or create laws that will actually protect people in our communities,” Serrano said. 

She said that includes prohibiting immigration enforcement in places of worship and schools, which was previously limited under a policy during the Biden administration that also included medical settings, shelters and other sensitive locations. 

Over the last two years, immigration arrests of parents near schools have shocked communities and sent fear into classrooms nationwide, including in San Diego. 

Serrano also said Congress should look to rein in federal agents’ use of force and ensure that they face consequences when they violate the rights of U.S. citizens or other community members.

U.S. Rep. Mike Levin, D-San Juan Capistrano, was just reelected to a fifth term in California’s 49th Congressional District. Levin said commonsense reforms on immigration could also include banning federal agents from wearing face masks and requiring them to wear clear identification and obtain judicial warrants to enter private spaces and “avoiding the sensitive locations like schools and churches and hospitals.” 

Levin and others are also eyeing comprehensive immigration reform, which Congress hasn’t passed in three decades, and looking to work with Republicans to get it done. 

Vargas said he favors “an orderly border” but that “we need the people that are being deported.” He mentioned making reforms for immigrants working as farm laborers, construction workers, home care workers and those who were brought to the U.S. as children known as “Dreamers.”

Vargas said the U.S. should be “that place where you can still come, work hard and make something of your life and help your family.” 

But Democrats hoping to seize on new majorities in Congress to pass immigration legislation will face a significant challenge in the White House: With Trump in the presidency, any bill passed with a simple majority runs the risk of being vetoed. Veto overrides require 67 votes in the Senate.

As it stands, Democrats will have 54 to 56 seats in the 100-person Senate and more than 250 in the 435-member House of Representatives, majorities not won since the 2008 election.

Tom Wong, an associate professor of political science who directs the U.S. Immigration Policy Center at University of California San Diego, said there could still be strategic options for Democrats. 

One possibility is that Trump keeps pushing an unpopular aggressive immigration crackdown in line with what voters have seen and Republicans have supported over the past two years. 

Another is that Democrats could pass bills through Congress that “publicly embarrass the Republican Party” if Trump decides to use his veto power to kill the bills, Wong said.

Power of the purse

Immigration enforcement agencies are enjoying historic funding with billions of extra dollars from a law passed during Trump’s first year back in office. That law covers federal spending through 2029.

But Democrats say Congress has a power of the purse that can be used as a check on the president. 

Peters said some of the unspent funds provided by the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” could be redirected. 

Levin said Congress could force additional government funding to “come with some serious reforms,” such as limiting immigration arrests to those with serious criminal records. 

But Wong said the congressional ability to limit funding for immigration enforcement under this administration is limited. 

“The reality is that it is already funded at historical levels and it has the money it needs.” 

Still, he said, Tuesday’s election showed that Democrats need to deliver real change and Republicans need to heed voters’ concerns on immigration and other issues — or face the consequences. 

“If Republicans do not read the room correctly and do not compromise on major aspects of our immigration policies, they may be sinking themselves in 2028 without even knowing it,” Wong said.