Pete Buttigieg is pressing libertarians and conservatives to get behind tougher immigration enforcement after the Trump administration’s aggressive tactics led to the deaths of two Americans in Minneapolis. In a post on X, the former transportation secretary said, “If there was ever a moment for libertarians and conservatives to step up and join the rest of us, we're in it.”
The message reflects the way Buttigieg has been trying to talk to voters outside his own party while putting a hard edge on his criticism of Trump-era immigration policy. Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and the Democrat who won the Iowa caucuses in 2020, laid out that argument in February during a conversation with Reason’s Nick Gillespie about immigration, policing and libertarian voters.
He said most Americans agree that people with criminal records should be deported or handled in the criminal justice system, but argued the administration went too far by sweeping up people who were otherwise in the country legally except for lacking permission to remain. Buttigieg said people with asylum or refugee status and even U.S. citizens have been caught up in the policy, a line that sharpened the criticism he first aimed in his X post.
That caution is part of a broader pitch Buttigieg has made before. He said trust between law enforcement and citizens is earned, and that policing works best when people trust those in uniform. Five or six years ago, he wrote a book about trust, and he said his core message to libertarian voters is rooted in freedom: government should provide basic services, constrain anyone who could make people unfree, and constrain itself.
Buttigieg’s timing is deliberate. He has been identified as a possible 2028 Democratic presidential candidate, and immigration is one of the places where he is trying to show both toughness and restraint without sounding like a traditional law-and-order Republican. The unanswered question is whether that balance can win over the voters he is targeting, or whether his appeal to libertarians and conservatives will remain a message aimed more at shaping his profile than at building a new coalition.
