Donald Trump won the biggest Republican victory in decades on a single promise – secure the border.
Now two Republican governors are lending their names to a Democrat-led push to hand states the power to import migrant workers.
And the man who spent years refusing to vote for Donald Trump is leading the effort.
Spencer Cox and Kevin Stitt Push State Migrant Work Visas With Democrat Governors
Utah Governor Spencer Cox never voted for Trump in 2016 or 2020. He finally relented in 2024 – only after Trump survived a bullet in Butler, Pennsylvania.
That backstory matters because Cox just volunteered to co-chair the National Governors Association Task Force on Immigration Policy alongside Democrat governors Wes Moore of Maryland and Matt Meyer of Delaware.
Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt joined him.
Stitt's record reads the same way. Trump endorsed him, raised money for him in 2022 – and Stitt repaid that loyalty by endorsing Ron DeSantis in the 2024 primaries. Trump later called him a "RINO Governor" and, through intermediaries, told Stitt exactly what he thought of him.
In a joint Bloomberg interview on Saturday, the four governors unveiled the task force and their priorities came through immediately.
The focus isn't border security. It isn't ICE cooperation. It's workforce permits – handing governors the authority to issue migrant work visas tailored to what agribusiness, construction, and hospitality lobbies say they need.
"They're having the calls from their workforce community – whether it's agriculture, whether it's construction or hospitality," Stitt told Bloomberg. "Let's actually have the governors issue workforce permits."
Call it what it is: a state run end-around on federal immigration law.
The NGA Immigration Task Force Plan That Has Conservatives Furious
The NGA task force runs parallel to a bill introduced by Utah Sen. John Curtis – another Utah RINO – that would give individual states authority to issue their own migrant work visas.
Under that framework, federal immigration enforcement doesn't disappear. It just becomes optional. States that want cheap labor can route around it.
Cox and Stitt were asked directly in the Bloomberg interview whether they thought ICE and DHS had been effective. Neither raised his hand.
Cox pointed to "the violence and the deaths that we've seen" during Minnesota enforcement actions – the language you'd expect from a Democrat press release, not a Republican governor defending Trump's most consequential policy achievement.
The numbers tell the story: monthly border encounters fell from 300,000 under Biden to 10,000 under Trump. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin confirmed the administration has recorded zero illegal releases at the border for 15 consecutive months.
The border is closed. These governors want to reopen it through a different door.
Greg Abbott Draws the Line Spencer Cox and Kevin Stitt Refused to Draw
Texas Governor Greg Abbott did.
"Governor Abbott will not support proposals that create new incentives for illegal entry or that treat those already here unlawfully as a ready labor pool," Abbott's spokesperson Andrew Mehalaris told Blaze News. "Texas jobs belong to Texans."
Then Mehalaris added the line that Cox and Stitt should have had ready: "States that did not face the invasion Texas confronted should not dictate terms that reopen the door."
Oklahoma City hosted the NGA Summer Meeting. Texas bore the full weight of the Biden border crisis while Utah and Oklahoma watched from a safe distance – and now both states want a seat at the table to write the terms of what comes next.
That's not federalism. That's freeloading.
The NGA Task Force on Immigration Policy has not yet released its formal agenda. The governors told Bloomberg what the agenda is: workforce permits and state-controlled visa pipelines, built on the premise that Trump's enforcement record is a problem to be managed rather than a victory to be defended.
The border didn't close itself. It closed because one man spent four years promising to close it – and then spent six months doing exactly that.
Two Republicans just decided that victory is the right moment to start negotiating it away.
Sources:
- Benjamin Roberts, "Trump-hating Republican governors conspire with Democrats to smuggle in even more migrants," Blaze Media, August 5, 2026.
- Brigham Tomco, "Bipartisan governors push for state-led migrant work visas," Deseret News, August 3, 2026.
- "Bipartisan Group of Governors Joins Forces to Tackle Immigration," Bloomberg, August 1, 2026.
- "NGA Announces New Executive Committee, Commemorates the Power of Service to Close Summer Meeting," National Governors Association, August 2026.