Will Democrats moderate on border security? Can they?

One early post-election test will be the migrant caravan, the third since September, now getting underway in Mexico.

Some Dems now explicitly admit that President Joe Biden failed.

Biden “failed us during his administration by not securing the border,” said Texas Sen.-elect James Talarico on the campaign trail, calling himself a “border-security Democrat.”

“The Biden administration had it wrong,” charged Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar; Iowa’s Sen.-elect Josh Turek said Trump did a “better job” on the border than Biden. 

Joining border moderates like Pennsylvania’s Sen. John Fetterman and Washington’s Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, this is plainly the wise political call: America wants secure borders with strong, competent enforcement, not Biden-style “wave them in” policies. 

But other Democrats refuse to admit either the disaster itself or the electoral harm it did the party in 2024. 

Leftist Rep. Delia Ramirez (Ill.), for one, wants not only to abolish ICE but CBP and the entire Department of Homeland Security as well. 

Michigan Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed wants drivers’ licenses for illegals, insisting, “we owe it to the world to open our doors”; New York’s Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a possible 2028 presidential front-runner, has long advocated for open borders under the guise of respecting the rights of asylum seekers (which most illegal migrants lack any legitimate claim to be). 

And this wing of the party has only grown more confrontational these last two years, with violent resistance to ICE enforcement — the 24/7 protests, illegal “checkpoints” and attempts to ram agents with cars.

And Biden himself ran his 2020 campaign vowing to normalize policy post-Trump, only to cave to the open-borders crowd against his own better instincts and deliver the most radical policy the country had ever seen.

Now Mexico’s government looks to be pushing the issue by engineering a new border rush, just as it did when Biden first took office.

President Trump’s elevation of immigration hawk Stephen Miller to chief of staff suggests the White House has little appetite for backdowns on the border at least as long as he’s in office — and indeed, the White House promised Thursday these caravans will not enter the country.

Caravan participants seem to be on board with the test: Cesar Sandoval, a 47-year-old Nicaraguan, who hopes to have “another chance” to enter the United States, pointedly says of newly elected Democrats: “We hope they remember that the ones who gave them the vote so they could make it to the Senate and Congress were the sons of Hispanics, the sons of Latinos.”

When they’re turned away, expect Democrats aligned with Ramirez to wave the bloody shirt over the horrid cruelty; silence or acquiescence from Talarico and Turek will be damning. 

If the party wants to win back the public’s trust, its new blood needs to step up and prove the left is no longer in the driver’s seat.