Nativism's Comeback, Donald Trump, and American Politics in 2025
Part Three in a series. The return of nativism and its link to politics and authoritarianism today.
The news comes at you fast these days. Just as I was tracing some of the history of nativism in America by looking at events from a century ago and planning to compare and contrast that to popular sentiments from today, protesters in Los Angeles and other cities were suddenly facing off against ICE agents and the nativist policies of the Trump administration. Which makes these pieces even more relevant than they were just last week.
So let’s dive in with a few thoughts on nativism, then and now, and consider how the movement made a comeback in America and how it’s impacting American politics today.
Reviewing the backstory from the 1920s
In my last two posts about the 1924 and 1928 elections I was hoping to provide context to today’s politics by looking at a particularly strong brand of nativism that worked its way to the forefront of American society a century ago.
To review, the nativist movement that swept the U.S. in the 1920s resulted in, among other things:
A new law that set strict quotas on immigrants who were not white, Protestant, and northwestern European.
A 103-ballot debacle at the 1924 Democratic convention when anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant delegates associated with the Ku Klux Klan faced off against delegates who were more comfortable with immigrants and wanted to nominate a Catholic for president.
A 1928 election in which the country’s first Catholic nominee was met with burning crosses on the campaign trail and suffered a landslide defeat at the hands of voters who couldn’t get over their fears of Catholic immigrants.
So it’s not an apples to apples comparison between the 1920s and the 2020s.
For one, presidential candidates today don’t find burning crosses from the KKK on the campaign trail.
And the fear of Catholic immigrants that was so prevalent in the 1920s has long since dissipated as Catholics have risen to the highest offices in the country.
In other respects, though, the sentiments that provide fuel for the anti-immigration movement are exactly the same today as they were a century ago. It’s in this way that the past can actually tell us something about contemporary politics.
The fall and rise (again) of nativism
The anti-immigrant sentiments of the 1920s faded to a degree and didn’t retain the same stronghold on America in the ensuing decades as they had during the elections of 1924 and 1928.
One notable, but limited, exception was in the 1950s when the U.S. deported large numbers of Mexican immigrants, many of whom had come here for agricultural work. Historians estimate that about 300,000 Mexicans were deported. That roundup of immigrants mimicked today’s efforts, though it was done with at least the tacit approval of Mexico, which was suffering a labor shortage and needed workers. Moreover, some number of migrants were given work permits and allowed to come out of the shadows and remain in the U.S.
But aside from that particular movement, there was generally a waning of nativist sentiments in America for most of the rest of the 20th century. For instance, check out this brief clip of a 1980 GOP presidential debate between Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, when they were asked whether children of Mexican immigrants should be able to attend public schools:
Compare the statements of Reagan in that debate to Trump’s words on the campaign trail last year.
Ronald Reagan: “Rather than talk of putting up a fence, why don’t we work out some recognition of our mutual problems …. Make it possible for [Mexican immigrants] to come here legally with a work permit … Open the border both ways.”
Donald Trump: “They’re rough people, in many cases from jails, prisons, from mental institutions, insane asylums … The Democrats say, ‘Please don’t call them animals. They’re humans.’ I said, ‘No, they’re not humans, they’re animals.’ "
Slightly different sentiments, no?
Also, as an aside, it’s pretty obvious (isn’t it?) that Ronald Reagan — pro-immigration, pro-free trade, and pro-international alliances — would be drummed out of today’s Republican party faster than you can say “Donald Trump.”
In any case, times changed. The sentiments of the Reagan-Bush years gave way to a nativist comeback in the U.S. in the 2000s. It was driven in part by a rising tide of immigration, both illegal and legal, from Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Opinions were also affected by the 9-11 terrorist attacks, which turned some people against Muslims. And the election of Barack Obama played a role, as well, because a not insignificant slice of GOP voters believed the birtherism conspiracy that Obama was an immigrant who was ineligible to be president.
Twenty-seven years after that Reagan-Bush faceoff there was another Republican presidential debate, this one in 2007. In a New Yorker piece at the time called “Return of the Nativist,” Ryan Lizza explored the immigration debate that was starting to divide the GOP:
The two formerly moderate Northeasterners, [Mitt] Romney and [Rudy] Giuliani, taunted each other about who was tougher on illegal immigrants. On the other side were [John] McCain and Mike Huckabee … who told their opponents that illegal immigrants “need some of our love and compassion” (McCain) and that “we are a better country than to punish children for what their parents did” (Huckabee).
Trumpian nativism prevails
Nine more years later, in 2016, Trump settled the GOP’s intraparty debate over immigration by winning the nomination and turbocharging the nativist movement. It’s hardly a coincidence that Trump had burst onto the political scene a few years earlier by promoting the birtherism conspiracy about Obama.
Today, Trumpian nativism is now the predominant view among Republicans. One need look no further than the 2024 presidential campaign for examples of this. Such as:
Trump’s statement that immigrants were “poisoning the blood” of the country.
Trump declaring he would turn away immigrants based on their religious beliefs.
The entirely made-up story of Haitian immigrants eating neighborhood pets in Ohio, which took over the news for days on end.
Criticism from across the GOP of Kamala Harris as a DEI candidate. Because, apparently, a woman whose parents came from Jamaica and India just had to be a DEI hire, even if she’d previously won numerous democratic elections as the district attorney of San Francisco, Attorney General of California, U.S. Senator, and U.S. vice president.
And even this image from a Trump campaign tweet. “Import the third world. Become the third world,” it read:
Comparing today’s nativists with those of the 1920s
In the 1920s the goal of nativists (many of whom were southerners who were also at the time preventing Blacks from voting in their own states) was to stop Catholics, Jews, and darker-skinned southern Europeans from coming to the U.S.
In the 2020s, the goal appears to be to remove as many immigrants as possible from the country, particularly non-white immigrants from Latin America, Asia, and Africa.
So while it’s true that the KKK today is not a prominent organization able to inflict its will on politics, and that Catholics aren’t being tormented as they were a century ago, the anti-immigrant fervor is essentially the same. The fear that immigrants were, and are, destroying American culture has merely been transferred to new targets.
And note the list of those who have stoked fear among nativists through the years. It’s not white Protestant immigrants from northern Europe, but rather everyone else. There is always a fear that some other group, be it Blacks or Catholics or Mexicans or whomever, is going to take over the predominant white culture.
The following quote gets to the heart of nativism. It’s from Robert Kagan’s book, Rebellion, about historical forces that have shaped American politics:
“A straight line runs from the slaveholding South … to the post-Reconstruction South of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, to the second Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s … to the burgeoning Christian nationalist movement of recent decades … to the Republican Party of today.”
So, yes, every time a nativist movement has risen in America, it’s been driven by white nationalists dedicated to preserving white supremacy and/or to restoring the country to a perceived past era of purity and greatness. It’s no accident that Trump advisor Stephen Miller recently suggested the current battle over immigration “is a fight to save civilization.”
The biggest difference now? Control of the government
But the biggest difference between nativists in the 1920s and the 2020s is that today’s nativists control the U.S. government.
Nativists now control the presidency (including the military and the Justice Department), Congress, one of the two major political parties, and the most popular news organization. The only time nativists have ever held this amount of power it was restricted to the South during the slavery and post-Reconstruction eras.
Here are a few recent news items (from before the Los Angeles protests) that caught my eye and got me thinking about how nativism has now gone beyond a political debate and has essentially become the official policy of the Trump administration.
1. South Africans and Ukrainians outrank Haitians and Nicaraguans?
The administration just revoked the temporary legal status that allowed a half-million immigrants to work and live in the U.S. while applying for legal residency or asylum. They’ve all been instructed to depart the country, even though many or most of them would be in danger if they tried to return to the homes they fled. This includes individuals and families from Haiti, Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. However, immigrants who fled Ukraine and who have the same temporary protected status, have so far been spared.
The administration also halted the refugee program for almost everyone trying to come to America. Even refugees from Afghanistan who are in hiding and whose lives are at risk because they worked for the previous Afghan government and cooperated with the U.S. during its fight against the Taliban. However, the U.S. has at the same time gone out of its way to welcome white South Africans who applied for refugee status.
Which means, what? Apparently, that white Ukrainians and white South Africans are welcome but Black Haitians and brown Latin Americans are not.
2. The immigration crackdown extends FAR beyond immigrants with criminal records
Across the country today, immigrants are being rounded up and deported even when they have no criminal record and are abiding by existing immigration laws. Even when they have jobs and pay taxes. Even when they have American spouses and children.
A story this week in the Wall Street Journal reported on how Stephen Miller pushed ICE agents to round up anyone and everyone possible:
The message was clear: The president … wasn’t pleased. The agency had better step it up. Gang members and violent criminals, what Trump called the “worst of the worst,” weren’t the sole target of deportations. Federal agents needed to “just go out there and arrest illegal aliens,” Miller told top ICE officials …
Agents didn’t need to develop target lists of immigrants suspected of being in the U.S. illegally, a longstanding practice, Miller said. Instead, he directed them to target Home Depot, where day laborers typically gather for hire, or 7-Eleven convenience stores.
The goal? A minimum of 3,000 arrests every day. As a result, people are being rounded up at workplaces, in store parking lots, and on street corners. They’re being arrested at courthouses and immigration offices when they show up for previously scheduled hearings, thinking they’re doing everything legally and by the book.
A lot of Americans are under the impression that the arrests of immigrants is entirely about ridding the country of those with criminal records. But this is easy enough to disprove. Everyone carries a camera in their pocket these days, so the evidence is everywhere.
Following are three examples of the scenes that are playing out in communities all over the country these days:
1. Here is a man crying over the arrest and presumed deportation of his wife and the mother to their children. She was following the rules and showed up at immigration court. The government dropped her case so that ICE agents could arrest her as she left the courtroom.
2. Here is a young girl crying after seeing her father taken away.
3. Here is an educator breaking down after ICE raided an elementary school graduation ceremony. This sent some parents scurrying and left young children crying in their teacher’s arms because they didn’t know if their parents would be there when they got out of school.
Do you want to know why people are protesting ICE? It’s not because they’re protecting criminals, as Trump and others would have you believe. It’s because they’re witnessing scenes like these and seeing families and neighborhoods and communities torn apart.
It didn’t have to be this way
None of what is happening in America today needed to happen.
It’s possible to deport immigrants with criminal records — or those who can’t prove a need for asylum — without resorting to these extremes and without indiscriminately rounding up people in workplaces, courthouses, or elementary schools.
Notably, about 6 million immigrants were removed from the country during the Bush, Obama, and Biden presidencies without anywhere near the same amount of disruption or trauma to families, communities, and the country.
It’s also possible to increase border security or change border policies to prevent more people from crossing the border illegally (as was finally done in the latter part of the Biden administration).
Similarly, it’s possible to add immigration judges and speed up the asylum hearing process so that fewer people remain here for months or years while waiting for their cases to be heard.
In fact, border security and additional immigration judges were two primary components of a bill the Biden administration negotiated with Republicans in Congress in 2024. The bill that Lindsey Graham praised, the Border Patrol supported, and the Wall Street Journal called “the most restrictive migrant legislation in decades.”
And yes, the same bill that Donald Trump insisted that Congress kill so he could keep immigration alive as a campaign issue.
So don’t kid yourselves. The Trump administration isn’t trying to pass a different immigration bill. This isn’t just about reducing crime or about immigrants taking away American jobs. It’s about a nativist, white nationalist movement that believes the country needs to be cleansed of non-white immigrants.
Lessons from history: The South in 1877, America in 2025
The Compromise of 1877 is known to history because it resolved the disputed 1876 presidential election by withdrawing from the South federal troops who’d been in the region since the end of the Civil War. It also meant, however, that northerners who were weary of fighting finally gave up trying to ensure equal rights for southern Blacks. Thus, Reconstruction failed and the South was again left under the control of the same white nationalists who’d fought a civil war over slavery.
Those white nationalists were southern Democrats at the time and they instituted, state by state, a de facto authoritarian regime in which they controlled all the levers of power and were able to shut Blacks out of democracy for nearly another century.
After the success of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, those white nationalists seemed relegated to the dustbin of history. But they never actually disappeared, just went underground until regaining strength in the past two decades.
Those nativists/white nationalists now reside in the Republican party and in the Trump administration. They control the entire federal government and are exhibiting the same authoritarian tendencies that once kept their ideological ancestors in power in the South for so long. Which means, sadly, that the fight for American democracy is far from over.
Also see: Other posts on Nativism in American Politics