Sen. Jim Banks pushes for Trump’s immigration crackdown to be written into law

A massive five-day ICE operation that resulted in 426 arrests across Indiana is fueling Hoosier Sen. Jim Banks’ push for Congress to consolidate President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown into law before a future administration can change course.

Banks praised “Operation Safe Community: Indiana” in an interview with Fox News Digital this week after federal immigration agents fanned out in his home state from Aug. 30 to Sept. 3, arresting 426 people with histories involving sex crimes, assault, domestic violence, drug trafficking and weapons offenses, according to ICE.

“This is why Donald Trump was elected in 2024: for mass deportations,” Banks told Fox News Digital. “That was one of his main agenda items during the campaign. And in this case, in Indiana, you see the direct result of that.”

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Left: Immigrants are streaming across the southern border of the United States. Right: Sen. Jim Banks, R-Ind. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo; Getty)

ICE also praised cooperation with state and local law enforcement in carrying out the operation, which Republicans have pointed to as a key aspect of successful enforcement.

But Banks argued that the operation also highlights a limitation of Trump’s crackdown: Aggressive executive enforcement today does not guarantee that the same immigration policies will survive the next administration.

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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, along with other federal law enforcement agencies, attend a pre-enforcement meeting in Chicago, Illinois, U.S., Sunday, Jan. 26, 2025. President Donald Trump has pledged to lead the largest deportation effort in U.S. history, vowing to eventually deport all aliens living in the country without authorization. (Christopher Dilts/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

“It’s important that we codify Trump’s border security measures and tough immigration policies and make them the law of the land,” he said.

The busts build on the lawmaker’s package of seven immigration bills, previously reported by Fox News Digital, which targets issues such as birthright citizenship, family-based immigration, H-1B visas, non-citizen CDLs and Congressional authority over Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to limit judicial intervention.

“If it could happen in Indiana, it could happen anywhere,” he added, arguing that the opposition made it harder to achieve immigration goals after moving ICE out of the 2025 immigration appropriations legislation.

“They’ve made it one of their biggest priorities in Congress: defunding our federal law enforcement, stopping ICE from doing its job, deporting violent criminals who are here illegally,” he said.

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“So it’s important that we codify Trump’s border security measures and tough immigration policies and make them the law of the land so that the next time, God forbid, a Joe Biden gets re-elected to the White House or someone who comes from that radical wing of the Democratic Party…”

Banks also directed his frustration at his own party, criticizing the Republican-led Senate for failing to advance separate election legislation that he said should be another priority.

Many on the right have pushed for passage of the SAVE Act, a bill requiring documentary proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections.

“That’s one of my biggest disappointments with this Republican Senate: We didn’t pass it,” he said.

“I hope that by the end of the year we can find a way to pass it. I’m going to continue to fight for it, but at the end of the day, the Trump administration and the Justice Department are doing a lot of crackdown on illegals voting in our elections.”

In another case in Indiana, DHS arrested an illegal immigrant on September 18 who entered the United States during the Obama administration and then voted federally.

Patricia Hyde, deputy director of ICE’s Enforcement Division, said the right to vote is the “cornerstone of democracy” as she announced the capture of Guatemalan national Helda Mendez-Merida for “poisoning our elections.”

“We cannot allow this sacred right (to vote) to be perverted,” she said.

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Banks said such incidents continue to surface “because Joe Biden and the Democrats have flooded our country with tens of millions of illegal immigrants – they’re still here (and) mass deportations are important.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has repeatedly rejected criticism that he is not working hard enough to pass the SAVE Act or advance Trump’s agenda.

Thune previously told Fox News Digital that he was an original co-sponsor of an earlier version of the bill and that the 50-vote threshold needed to pass provisions qualifying for the parliamentary maneuver known as reconciliation remained a sticking point.

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“I keep asking the question: Am I the only one in this town who knows how to count to 50? Because it seems like these questions are coming up and there are a lot of people who haven’t seemed to internalize the fact that there are no Democrats who are going to turn around and vote for this,” Thune said.

Alex Miller of Fox News Digital contributed to this report.