As a longtime Republican Party of Minnesota activist who has served as a delegate at every level, and supporter of President Trump, I was honored when former Attorney General Pam Bondi appointed me a federal immigration judge in the wake of the Biden open-borders catastrophe.
My colleagues and I routinely worked long days with abbreviated breaks and lunches processing the chaos that flooded our system: millions of illegal entrants, strained courts, public-safety risks, and the deliberate erosion of sovereignty. I recently stepped down from my role as an immigration judge to spend more time with my family. What I will not retire from is defending the rule of law and the America First principles that have finally begun restoring order. Immigration Court staff work incredibly hard every day.
Mike Lindell’s immigration proposal, and his subsequent scramble to deny it, is a betrayal of those principles, of President Trump’s mandate, and of the very officers, agents, and judges still laboring to clean up the mess left behind by Joe Biden and his autopen.
Lindell’s own words, recorded in multiple interviews and briefly posted on his campaign site, describe a classic amnesty. Under his proposal, illegal aliens already in the country would receive a registration window to obtain a “conditional non-resident visa” or “Worker Visa Card.” These cards would not expire so long as the holder avoided conviction for a gross misdemeanor or greater. Holders could work legally, pay taxes, obtain driver’s licenses, and remain indefinitely saying “you don’t have to leave ever.”
That is amnesty by any traditional definition used in immigration debates for decades: forgiveness of illegal presence, grant of legal status, work authorization, and indefinite presence without first requiring departure.
Lindell’s subsequent claims that he “never” supported amnesty, that comments were merely about short-term seasonal guest-worker visas, or that everything was “taken out of context” simply do not match the recorded interviews or the document his campaign published. The Washington Examiner released the full audio; the contradictions are not media inventions.
Lindell knew exactly what he was proposing. He called himself “a person of second chances.” He even said of Republicans and President Trump’s likely opposition, “And maybe the President won’t like it and I said, ‘I don’t care.’ I said, ‘this is going to work.’”
In interviews he even explicitly discussed shortening and subsidizing the path to citizenship with revenue extracted from employers, using public funds to make legalization cheap or free, discounting citizenship to the greatest country in the world like it was a pillow.
This is not a technical quibble. Biden’s policies deliberately broke the system. Catch-and-release, parole abuse, interior non-enforcement, plans in the final days of his administration to undermine President Trump’s incoming administration and the resulting surge of illegal entries that overloaded every part of the apparatus — Border Patrol, ICE, CBP, Homeland Security, and the immigration courts. Judges like me spent countless long days trying to impose order on an engineered backlog while American communities absorbed the costs in crime, strained schools and hospitals, depressed wages for American workers, and eroded trust in the law itself.
Lindell’s plan would compound that damage. Granting immediate legal work status and permanent renewable presence to those already here illegally rewards the violation and signals to future arrivals that the next “one-time” window is always coming. It undercuts American workers by formalizing competition from people who entered outside the legal process. It makes us less safe by treating illegal presence itself as a mere technicality rather than a continuing violation, and by limiting removal largely to post-conviction of higher-level offenses, taking aim at and undercutting the Lakan Riley Act. “Second chances” for illegal entry is not compassion; it is an invitation to more of the same.
Worse, Lindell has undermined the very people doing the hard work of restoration. He criticized ICE and related enforcement efforts in Minnesota for removing “good illegals” who “haven’t done anything” and “might have lived here 10 years,” complaining they were “not getting the ones we want caught.” That is not America First. It is second-guessing the officers, agents, and judges who finally have a mandate to enforce the law after years of deliberate sabotage.
Contrary to Mr. Lindell's assertion, in Minnesota alone, hundreds of murderers, rapists, pedophiles, drug dealers, human traffickers, and violent felons are amongst those who were removed. These criminals who Mr. Lindell calls "good illegals," are the worst of the worst and are exactly the ones we wanted caught and removed.
President Trump’s agenda is mass deportation of illegal aliens, not a Minnesota experiment in permanent conditional status for millions. Lindell’s “I don’t care” posture toward the President he claims to support is not leadership; it is freelancing that weakens the coalition that finally began securing the border.
Minnesota Republicans and the broader America First movement cannot afford this. We have spent years fighting the DFL’s sanctuary policies, driver licenses for illegal immigrants, and the magnet effect of non-enforcement. Republicans in the Minnesota legislature, led by Speaker Demuth, forced Walz and the liberals to abandon their taxpayer funded healthcare for illegal aliens scheme and we are finally making progress. This plan would undermine those hard fought gains. Lindell’s proposal, however rebranded after the backlash, reopens the very door President Trump and his administration, along with Republicans across the country, including here in Minnesota, have been working to close.
I spent my time on the bench cleaning up the human and institutional wreckage of open borders. The solution is not a new registration window and renewable cards. It is sustained enforcement, cooperation with federal partners, removal of those who have no legal right to be here, and a clear message that illegal entry will not be rewarded with legal status.
Lindell’s plan and his subsequent denials fail that test. Minnesota deserves better than a candidate who floats amnesty, dismisses the President’s concerns, criticizes the agents doing the work, and then lies to us all to pretend what we saw and heard ourselves never happened.
Editor's Note: Do you enjoy Townhall's conservative reporting that takes on the radical left and woke media? Support our work so that we can continue to bring you the truth.
Join Townhall VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.
Join the Conversation
VIP members get the ability to comment on articles.