Border encounters dropped from 300,000 per month under Joe Biden to 10,000 per month under Donald Trump. Fifteen consecutive months of zero releases at the border. The most secure southern boundary in modern American history.

So naturally, a group of Republican governors looked at that success and decided now would be a great time to start letting more people in.

Utah Governor Spencer Cox is leading a National Governors Association task force — alongside Democratic Delaware Governor Matt Meyer — to push Congress for state-level authority to issue migrant work visas. The proposal would let individual state legislatures decide how many temporary foreign workers to import, effectively creating fifty different immigration policies while the federal government is still mopping up the last administration's disaster.

Cox told Bloomberg on Saturday that "for 40 years, we've been trying to do immigration reform and nobody's ever been able to get it done. But what's different this time is that we have a secure border." Which sounds reasonable until you realize the translation is: Trump did the hard part, now let us undo it.

Sen. John Curtis of Utah has already introduced a bill creating a voluntary state-sponsored visa program to expand the temporary migrant workforce. On the other side of the aisle, Nevada Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto reintroduced her own bill — one that restricts deportation of parents of U.S.-born children and allows fines in exchange for legal status. The bipartisan "Dignity Act" has collected over 100 stakeholder endorsements and bundles border security tech with a citizenship pathway for DACA recipients.

Cox's pitch at the NGA meeting was disarmingly casual. "Work permits, can we start there?" he asked. Sure, Governor. And while we're at it, can we start with who exactly is going to compete with American workers for those permits — and at what wage?

DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, to his credit, threw cold water on the grander ambitions. He posted on X: "NO amnesty for illegal aliens. Ever."

Conservative commentators noticed what was happening immediately. Laura Loomer, Robby Starbuck, and Steve Bannon all flagged the NGA push as an end-run around Trump's border enforcement. They all laid out the case that Republican governors were effectively conspiring with Democrats to smuggle in more migrants under the polite language of "workforce needs."

The timing tells you everything. Cox isn't proposing this during a border crisis — he's proposing it precisely because Trump solved the border crisis. The 15-year-old playbook traces back to the 2011 Utah Compact on Immigration, a framework Cox has championed for years. The secure border didn't change his position. It just gave him better talking points.

Outgoing NGA chair Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt handed the gavel to incoming chair Maryland Governor Wes Moore — a Democrat — which tells you where the NGA's center of gravity is heading. The task force Cox and Meyer are co-leading isn't some rogue operation. It's the institutional GOP making nice with Democrats on the one issue where Trump's base will tolerate zero compromise.

Mullin's position matters here. He supports modernizing seasonal employment visa programs for agriculture — a narrow, targeted reform that addresses actual labor shortages without creating new pathways for mass migration. That's the line between reasonable policy and political sabotage, and Cox's proposal lands on the wrong side of it.

The Dignity Act alone should raise every alarm. Border security tech and criminal penalties for unlawful reentry sound tough until you read the rest: asylum streamlining, employment verification mandates that function as amnesty-lite, and a citizenship pathway for DACA recipients. It's the same comprehensive reform package that's failed for two decades, rebranded with a nicer name and better PR.

Trump took border encounters from 300,000 a month to 10,000. Fifteen months of zero releases. The border is secure for the first time in a generation. And the Republican governors who couldn't be bothered to help secure it are now lining up to poke holes in it.

That's not reform. That's a leveraged buyout of someone else's work.