Few issues strike an American nerve like immigration. Fewer galvanize the U.S. bishops to such a fervent and morally resolute response.
Tuesday’s blue wave—flipping Senate seats in Republican strongholds like Texas, Iowa and South Carolina—returned the Senate and the House of Representatives to the Democrats, who take control in January.
But with Immigration and Customs Enforcement already funded at historically high levels through 2029, and with President Donald J. Trump’s strong executive control still intact, there are limits on what Congress can do.
I went to Washington before the election to speak with the leaders of think tanks and advocacy groups influencing immigration reform across the political spectrum to find out how much a Democratic Congress could change immigration policy over the next two years.
The Advocates
Gaby Pacheco, president and C.E.O. of TheDream.US, the nation’s largest college and career success program for undocumented immigrant youth, said she expects to see some long-overdue oversight once the Democrats take control in January.
“There’s going to be hearings. There’s going to be Democrats calling in certain leaders, secretaries, heads of departments to … hold them accountable for what is happening right now,” Ms. Pacheco said.
She also said that while ICE already has “astronomical” amounts of funding, she’s hoping to see the agency slow down over the next two years as those funds finally begin to dwindle.
Democrats could also use spending bills as leverage.
“We just saw earlier this year a government shutdown over D.H.S. specifically,” said Eric Rodriguez, senior vice president for policy and advocacy at UnidosUS, the nation’s largest Latino civil rights and advocacy organization.
“Are we likely to see a reaction like that, that says we’re going to just shut this down until we get a vote on guardrails, things that represent some restraint on Homeland Security and ICE? Yes, that’s possible.”
There are also possible avenues for bipartisan work that don’t involve a full shutdown, he said, like bills designed to streamline legal immigration for specific industries suffering from recent enforcement sprees.
“There may be sector-specific bills that would be advanced to try and provide some stability to those in the workforce,” Mr. Rodriguez said.
Ms. Pacheco said that while she fears the next few months may actually bring more deportations, she is hopeful that people are interested in finally addressing immigration in some permanent capacity.
“We have seen, in these last 30 years, the great experiment of doing nothing on immigration. We have seen super-enforcement, which is what’s happening now. We’ve seen, from the Biden administration, the opposite, a more generous ‘Let’s let people come in,’” Ms. Pacheco said. “Now we have to figure out how to actually get something done.”
The Centrists
Cecilia Esterline, senior immigration policy analyst at the Niskanen Center, a centrist think tank, believes immigration reform will have to wait until the 2028 election cycle. Given that changes over the last two years have happened through executive order, she said the new Congress may not be able to change a lot.
The Supreme Court declined to intervene on Oct. 27 in a legal fight over a Biden-era policy that let immigration judges pause deportation cases, which could add to already crowded immigration dockets. Democrats could exert some power, Ms. Esterline said, over the funds needed to hire immigration judges.
“What I think is arguably the most impactful and most detrimental part of what’s happening right now is the cuts to legal immigration,” Ms. Esterline said. The decrease, she said, stems from executive restrictions, travel bans, growing application backlogs and steep hikes in visa fees.
She holds out tempered hope that the 2028 elections might change that—so long as both parties do some soul-searching in the meantime.
“I don’t think either party is really equipped for a post-Trump era in terms of an actual immigration plan,” she said. “I think that both parties do need to come to a real conclusion over what it is that they want their immigration system to look like, because neither party benefits from the pendulum-swinging, executive-branch-driven immigration policy.”
The Restrictionists
The office at the Center for Immigration Studies is home to every miniature Statue of Liberty depiction imaginable—Lady Liberty rendered as Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, the green M&M. Mark Krikorian, executive director of C.I.S., said he began the collection because he thought liberals had co-opted the Statue of Liberty as a symbol of unlimited immigration.
C.I.S. is a small but prominent immigration restrictionist group, which describes itself as “low-immigration, pro-immigrant.” Mr. Krikorian has been its executive director since 1995.
Mr. Krikorian said he does not expect much to change on immigration policy now that Democrats will control Congress.
“Their own voters are going to be demanding that they do something, and in fact, they’re going to have to be extra strident, precisely because they have no ability to change what the administration is going to do,” Mr. Krikorian said.
Mr. Krikorian would prefer to see more compromise over immigration policy in Congress, but he does not believe the Democratic Party will work with Republicans on the issue.
Mr. Krikorian predicts that most politicians will tread water with immigration policy over the next two years, but that the potential presidential candidates for 2028—Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Representative Brandon Gill of Texas, Senator Eric Schmitt of Missouri and Vice President JD Vance, Mr. Krikorian’s choice—might push back against legal immigration as well as illegal.
“They’re not just about enforcement,” Mr. Krikorian said. “And so, when Trump moves off the political scene, you’re going to have a debate that is both somewhat less hysterical—just because Trump’s a unique hate figure for the left—but also more constructively and explicitly restrictionist.”
The Church
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops headquarters in Washington, D.C., impresses not only with its size but also with its vacancy—the conference laid off about a third of its migration staff in 2025 after the Trump administration halted funding for its refugee resettlement work.
David Spicer is the director of policy and engagement for the U.S.C.C.B.’s Secretariat of Migration, a forward-facing role that often involves managing relations with Congress on behalf of the conference.
“I wish I could tell you that on a weekly basis I’m having serious policy discussions with members of Congress and their staff about possible changes to the immigration system, but I think the real issue right now—and this has been the case for some time—is that we’re not having discussions about policy,” Mr. Spicer said. “It’s really just an exchange of rhetoric and things that are meant to alienate one group or another.”
Until cross-communication improves, it will be difficult to make headway with any immigration reforms, he said, much less to build reforms that reflect Catholic social teaching.
While Catholic social teaching does not exist to prescribe specifics on immigration policy, it does offer important guideposts for navigating it: targeted and proportionate immigration enforcement, maintaining family units, expanding access to legal immigration and addressing the causes of forced migration.
“Obviously, it’s perfectly reasonable for people to be treated differently based on things such as immigration status, but there comes a certain point where that treatment can infringe on people’s God-given human dignity, and that’s where it becomes problematic from the perspective of the church,” Mr. Spicer said.
Mr. Spicer emphasized that the church does not simply dismiss the legal and political considerations surrounding immigration. But for the church to hold legal considerations above all moral considerations, he said, would be impossible.
While Mr. Spicer does not expect an immediate change in immigration policies or practices to come from the midterms, he remains hopeful that the bishops can help bridge divides.
“That’s what I would say the bishops are hopeful for and what the bishops have long strived to do,” he said, “to create opportunities for that meaningful conversation and dialogue and to build bridges in that way.”
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