Trump's hardline immigration zealots were seething and accusing President Donald Trump of betraying the core promise that got him elected, according to an Axios report published Monday.
A frustrated coalition of conservatives, led by immigration hawks from the Heritage Foundation and other GOP think tanks, is blasting the White House for softening its deportation rhetoric ahead of the midterms. They're furious that Trump appears to be caving to wealthy donors and big business lobbyists who want cheap labor over enforcement.
"The President has only gotten pressure in his face to tone down the enforcement," fumed Mike Howell of The Oversight Project. "A conscious decision was made to go after the worst first, which was a deviation from the central campaign promise of mass deportations."
"The people holding the signs on the floor, those are my people," Howell declared. "The people in the suites, those are not my people. That's who we're going up against."
The group, led by former head of ICE and Customs and Border Protection Mark Morgan, is demanding what they call "Phase 2" — a staggering one million deportations annually. They're convinced Trump is listening to the wrong advisors and claim Stephen Miller should be leading the effort, though the coalition hasn't met with him yet.
Only 350,000 ICE removals happened in fiscal 2025, compared to 271,400 under Biden. Trump's team boasts of "two million self-deportations," but ICE won't release its year-end report to Congress. Border Patrol refuses to share official figures either.
The White House denies any backtracking, but the deportation zealots don't buy it. They're circulating enforcement playbooks across Capitol Hill, determined to force Trump back on message before the base revolts.
"These are relationships that have been built over a decade or more," Morgan said. "We're trying to influence them not to back off, stay the course with what the president promised the American people."