Kamala Harris’s eleventh hour trip to the southern border reeks of desperation. Intentionally or not, she is making it clear who is in control of the narrative on immigration—and it isn’t her.

Donald Trump is more strongly identified with anti-immigration politics than any other public figure in the Western hemisphere. His great contribution to American politics has been to smash the bipartisan consensus shared by leftists and milquetoast Republicans that views mass immigration like magic fairy dust for our economic woes. “They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists,” Trump said at his historic campaign launch in 2015. “And some, I assume, are good people.”

Trump’s incendiary rhetoric scandalized elites in both parties, but it resonated with millions of citizens who felt their country slipping away. America has only continued to shift rightward on the question of mass immigration since Trump arrived on the scene. He insisted it was a serious national question for the people to answer, rather than a settled future decided for the people by their elites.  

This shift was made possible by Trump’s bravado and the reactive extremism of his enemies. During his presidency, the left waged a relentless legal and propaganda war against federal immigration enforcement. Harris, at the time, endorsed decriminalizing the border, though now she says that there should be “consequences” for illegal crossing. Trump was able to make significant progress despite this obstruction, but on the first day of the Biden administration the left’s open border policy became law. The rest, as they say, is history.

Democrats are now desperate to put the genie back in the bottle, at least for a few weeks, but Harris can stage no photo-op that will match the power of Trump’s hardline message. After four years of the Biden-Harris border nightmare, America has embraced Trump’s draconian solutions. A majority of Americans now support mass deportation of illegal immigrants, according to various polls. This is nothing short of a public opinion coup for the former, and perhaps future, president.

What should Democrats do? They can try calling Trump a racist, but that didn’t work in 2016, and it won’t now, when his signature issue is more salient than it has ever been.

The chaos in Springfield, Ohio has clarified the stark choices available to voters, despite Harris’s feeble attempts to muddy the waters. Trump has played the left like a fiddle, baiting his enemies into “debunking” his comments about dogs and cats, and then drawing them into defending an influx of 20,000 Haitians into a small Rust Belt town on the basis that the invasion happened “legally.” Ohio’s Republican governor Mike DeWine has defended the Haitians as well, reminding the public of the milquetoast Republicanism that Trump swept aside. They are not impressed.

The “legal” invasion of Springfield exposes the absurdity of the old debate on mass immigration, which was never much of a debate in the first place. Politicians in both parties treated immigration like a purely economic question, in which the benefits, including such intangible blessings as “diversity,” invariably outweighed the costs. People on the right might speak openly of their desire for less illegal immigration or pay occasional lip service to an elusive “assimilation,” but it was out of the question to voice the opinion that mass immigration is something undesirable, and a threat to the identity and way of life of the American homeland.

Trump summarized the shift he has brought to immigration politics at a rally in Pennsylvania last Monday, where he placed the southern border invasion in historical and cultural context:

“It takes centuries to build the unique character of each state,” Trump said. “But reckless migration policy can change it quickly and permanently. Just like we’ve seen in London, and Paris, and Minneapolis … If Kamala Harris wins this election, she will flood Pennsylvania cities and towns with illegal migrants from all over the world. And Pennsylvania will never be the same.”

Trump’s message is radical by the standards of the recent past. We are a long way from the milky “compassion” of George Bush and Mitt Romney. Trump is treating immigration like a true national problem. He is telling Americans that they can, and must, exclude foreign peoples and habits to preserve what makes America American. And yes, Americans must be willing to repatriate millions who have already come here in search of a “better life.”

Trump is offering Americans the chance of a better life, to have their own country once again without apologies. Harris is right to fear the potency of Trump’s message. Immigration advocates can play shell games with crime and economic data, but they cannot erase the commonsense reaction to the experience of being invaded and displaced. Most communities in the United States, excepting those with the privilege of building private walls and fortresses, have lived through this transformation.

For some, the process happened over the course of 15 or 20 years; for others, in just a few. The endemic nature of the invasion has given Trump a captive audience in state after state, from Ohio to the suburbs of New York City. Earlier this month in Nassau County, less than 30 miles from Times Square, Trump spoke to a packed crowd of 15,000, many of whom waited hours to hear him speak. “I want to be known as your border president,” Trump told the MAGA faithful.

Leftists can dismiss Trump’s nationalism as irrational or racist, but they can’t deny its power. It’s no wonder Harris is trying to steal a bit of Trump’s magic for herself.