Throughout the presidential campaign, voters consistently told pollsters that they were sick and tired of America’s broken immigration system and its porous border. And to the surprise of many Democrats, that number included many Latino voters and naturalized citizens in cities like Chicago that historically built their populations by welcoming new Americans.

The Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris, said little that was new or useful during the campaign on the subject. She was hamstrung by intraparty disagreement. Her progressive base generally was (and is) for no enforcement applied to ordinary persons who have broken immigration law, supporting de facto open borders by always seeing people living in the U.S. illegally as either political or economic refugees who should be welcomed and embraced. Even the once-common term “illegal immigrant” was changed to further that goal. But Harris also knew that progressive position, flying in the face of the rule of law, would not help her get elected. Beyond broad generalities, silence was her pragmatic option.

Trump, who clearly and loudly stated he was for mass deportations of all persons lacking legal status in the U.S., jumped into that void.

Already the president-elect has announced his intentions to appoint South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem to head the Department of Homeland Security, former Immigration and Customs Enforcement head Tom Homan as his “border czar” and his longtime confidante Stephen Miller for White House deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser. All three are immigration hardliners. Clearly, the prior immigration bill, a so-called compromise that Trump squashed, is now chum in Trumpian waters.

Already Homan has laid down the gauntlet to defensive Democratic governors such as JB Pritzker of Illinois, who said Wednesday on MSNBC, “I am going to do everything that I can to protect our undocumented immigrants. They are residents of our state.” (For his part, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has called the president-elect “a tyrant” and has said he would not allow the Chicago Police Department to aid in immigration enforcement.)

Of course, immigration enforcement is a federal responsibility, and Homan said after Trump’s announcement that Pritzker and other Democratic governors and mayors should “get the hell out of the way” if they were not going to help, implying that beefed-up ranks of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents soon would be swarming through so-called sanctuary cities like Chicago as their mayors and governors helplessly watch. And there is no reason, given the records of the players on the new roster, not to worry this will in fact be the case, especially given Trump’s Truth Social statement that Homan is in charge of “all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin.” (sic)

How should ordinary Chicagoans feel about this coming conflict? Is there reason to fear major unrest in the city’s streets? Will the Democratic governors and mayors merely stand aside as Homan’s agents swoop into states like Illinois, with the support of a duly elected president? Will they resist, an implication of Pritzker’s word “protect”? Will newspapers like this one soon be filled with stories of families being ripped apart?

We say there is much reason to worry about all of that. It is vital that Trump and his officials, and his opponents, cool down the rhetoric, change the tone and, ideally, reframe the debate in favor of the economic benefits to the nation of legal immigration.

Job one should be expanding the avenues for legal immigration, and Homan, Miller and Noem all should be talking a lot more about that. Work-visa programs for highly educated workers need to grow exponentially. Similarly, programs for guest workers who seek semi-skilled positions, and whom population-challenged states like Illinois badly need for their workforces, also need to be expanded.

And the entire asylum system must be reformed. Those who come to America to escape genuine political persecution must be effectively protected and able to gain legal status, allowing them to work and contribute to their new home. On all of that, there should be no disagreement.

Similarly, it’s not unreasonable for the authorities to expeditiously deport those in noncompliance who have broken serious laws. On MSNBC, even Pritzker allowed that “there are certain circumstances in which the federal government, state governments should work together to allow deportation. An example would be somebody who’s been convicted of a violent crime.” So that is another area of broad agreement, and the new administration should move in those cases.

But that’s where clear agreement ends. Pritzker certainly implied on MSNBC that he was uneasy with deporting those “law-abiding undocumented immigrants in this country” who had been issued final deportation orders by a federal court, at least beyond requesting someone leave voluntarily. He did note that he would not be able to stop any such enforcement by the feds.

Of course, current U.S. law says noncitizens merely falling out of compliance with their visa are subject to deportation and the feds even accept anonymously reported tips. Reportedly, there are well over 1 million people living in the U.S. who have received final deportation orders and were told to leave the country but have stayed. Several thousand live in Chicago.

Here is the third rail of this debate: Many leading progressives don’t want this law enforced, but they also don’t want to say out loud that they want decriminalization of all immigration violations because that position doesn’t have enough popular support. Trump used that Democratic illogic to help get himself elected on the grounds that he, and only he, would actually maintain the rule of law in an area that everyone agrees is a federal responsibility.

There is no question Trump will have the right to enforce federal immigration laws. But how Trump uses his power once he returns to the White House will probably say more about what happens now in America than any other policy decision he makes.

The big question here to our minds is how the nation ethically deals with the simple reality that it has not meaningfully enforced its own laws for years due to American internal conflict and thus has tacitly encouraged people to cross the border illegally. That’s the best argument for some form of compassionate Ronald Reagan-style amnesty for otherwise law-abiding persons already here for several years, people who have formed family and community bonds and often live in mixed-status households and have been tacitly encouraged to do so by the lack of enforcement that Trump now wants corrected.

So by all means secure the border, Mr. Trump. By all means require employers to use the existing E-Verify system to know a potential worker’s status and require them to follow the law. By all means remove the relatively small number of undocumented people guilty of serious criminal offenses. By all means, discourage people from crossing the border in violation of the law and remove incentives to do so. And, yes, you are within your rights to insist that those who have been told by a court’s final order to leave actually go. (Ideally, with leave to try again if they do so according to the rules.) Otherwise there is no point in those orders being issued in the first place.

But also start talking about the power of legal immigration, start boosting its numbers, and easing the red tape and the endless delays. Mr. Trump, get your hardliners talking about that as well as enforcement. And for heaven’s sake, look after the kids who were brought here by their parents through no choice of their own and have found themselves in school or at work after living for years in a country that enabled that reality if only through its own governmental inaction. Most Americans, including most Republicans, oppose national cruelty and support giving that group, branded by Democrats as Dreamers, this one-time chance.

What a powerful and pragmatic opening gesture that would be for this Republican administration.

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