Trump’s Immigration Strategy Shift: Targeting Jail Residents Instead of Streets

By Eric Mack | Saturday, 31 January 2026 01:05 PM EST

President Donald Trump has made a “brilliant decision” in how his administration is approaching illegal immigration enforcement during his second term, according to political strategist Dick Morris on Newsmax.

“I think that Trump has made a brilliant decision, which is that rather than the first term, Trump would have gone to Minnesota, gone into Minneapolis and said, ‘if you oppose ICE and you harass them, you’re going to go to jail,'” Morris told “Saturday Agenda.”

“[In] the second term, Trump says, hey, virtually all of the illegal immigrants we want to arrest and deport from this country in Minnesota are already in jail on various state charges. Before we throw people out off the street, let us go into the jail, remove them indoors, peacefully, without protesters, get rid of them.”

Instead of conducting high-profile street arrests that can spark protests and confrontations, Trump is bringing down the temperature after two fatal shootings of protestors, and the approach could reduce chaos in heavily Democratic areas.

“You have to ask yourself why in all the southern states, all the red states, there’s not controversy over ICE throwing people out of the country,” Morris said.

“It’s only in the blue state core in Minnesota that there’s a controversy,” Morris added.

He compared the strategy to enforcing traffic laws through cameras rather than high-speed highway stops, arguing that jail-based deportations minimize the risk of violence.

“If we apprehended the people in jail based on their being there for other reasons and then deported them, this would all be peaceful,” he said.

“Nobody would be harassing us with cell phones. Nobody would be standing in the way of armored vehicles. Nobody would be killed.”

“It’s a little bit like traffic incidents. If you find people violating the traffic laws as a result of a camera, it’s fine. But to intercept them on the highway, going 90 miles an hour, pulling them over, there’s a potential of violence and miscarriage of justice.

“So Trump is so correct in making that distinction. That’s a second term distinction. He never would have done that in the first term,” Morris concluded.