Edit: Interesting, didn’t expect this post to be controversial. Here’s some of my reasoning:
Democrats became gradually more progressive in their border policy between 2000-2016. In the mid-2000s, many prominent Democrats in Congress supported significant spending on security fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border and were critical of “sanctuary cities.” By contrast, during the Trump administration, Democrats were largely united against most of Trump’s immigration and border security initiatives, including opposing funding for a proposed border wall. The evolution in Democratic views on immigration is clear when comparing the party’s 2012 platform, which promoted a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants but with certain conditions, to the 2016 platform, which removed all caveats on the path to citizenship source.
I feel the early Trump era provided vindication that allowed some real expression of what equity looks like in border policy. (That said, I do readily admit my “chad” symbolism is a bit strong; rather I think it’s just that the DNC allowed more space for these voices at the time.)
However, all this progress has recently been lost since the election of the current incumbent, as Democrats have leaned back into border security, implicitly admitting that the conservative framing of the issue is a valid concern.
noted i guess i need to figure out how to express this better. because there’s definitely some kind of capitulation to conservatives going on, and i agree with you that it’s not foundational but more aesthetic—yet obviously meaningful enough that it is affecting certain instances of policy
I think a lot of the capitulation you’re seeing is just the cascading aftereffects of the ramping up of migrant shipping policies from the southern border states(or just Texas I guess). The scale of that kind of forced some form of reaction outside the norm.