Donald Trump highlighted his crackdown on immigration during his congressional address, but a Democratic strategist warned the issue could eventually spark backlash.
The president acknowledged the family of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student murdered by an undocumented migrant in Georgia, and whose mother and sister were invited to attend the speech by first lady Melania Trump, and "CNN This Morning" host Audie Cornish said he clearly relished the topic.
"I feel like this is his sweet spot, this is what he cares about," Cornish said. "This is what he has the really full-throated support of Republicans for."
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Vice president J.D. Vance will visit Eagle Pass, Texas, on Wednesday to tour an immigration processing facility, which Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson said underscored the importance of the issue to the administration.
"I think this is an issue that the president wants to talk about as much as possible," Anderson said. "One, because public opinion is very much on his side on this issue. They think it's important, and he has the numbers to back him up, not just in the polling, but in terms of reduced encounters at the border. Since becoming president, it is true that there has been a change in what has happened along our southern border, so the numbers. Even relative to a year ago, I mean, he's able to point to numbers that are in his favor. The other thing that I think Republicans in particular really like about the way Trump is handling this issue is for a long time, Republicans were told that they were mean for wanting to be the ones to be tough on immigration, tough on the border."
"Yes, that by being tough on immigration, you're somehow not compassionate," she added, "and what Trump is really trying to do, you see it with him featuring the family of Laken Riley, etc., is say, no, by being tough on immigration, we're actually the compassionate ones. We are the ones who are keeping track of what is the negative effect on those here in the country."
Democratic strategist Chuck Rocha, a senior adviser to both of Bernie Sanders' presidential campaigns, said that conflicted with the reality that many Americans were seeing in their communities.
"Here's how this could backfire," Rocha said. "I think everybody can agree, I can agree as a Democrat, folks who come here, break our laws, hurt people, do horrible things that we talked about last night should be taken away. They should be deported, all the things. But you only have so many of those people, and what you're going to see is the stories that you're starting to see in papers of folks who have just been here undocumented, working for many, many years, law abiding citizens who are getting swept up into this and shipped away."
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