“A closed border is a compassionate border”

Abstract Immigration is one of the most contentious issues of our time. Prior research about immigration reform discourse in Western Europe and the United States has focused primarily on the important role that populist rhetoric has played in recent years. The rise of the populist radical right has led to a shift in what is sayable and has normalized explicitly racist and xenophobic statements that were formerly taboo. President Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, in particular, has received a lot of scholarly attention. This article contributes to this scholarly discourse by focusing on congressional debates about immigration. More specifically, this article is interested in understanding how the Republican party appealed to voters that were not swayed by Trump’s populist rhetoric and argues that their emphasis on traditional values and compassionate conservatism was a particularly important rhetorical strategy.