As the Trump administration expands the enforcement authority of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to capture criminal illegal immigrants, fears have grown over whether the new administration will also target migrants who have lived and worked peacefully in the U.S. for decades. One GOP senator is calling for reform of U.S. immigration policy to make it more “skills-based” and “flexible” in a rapidly evolving immigration landscape.

ICE reportedly made over 3,500 arrests of criminal illegal immigrants during President Donald Trump’s first week in office, a 90% increase from the pace of ICE arrests during former President Joe Biden’s term. While speculation is rampant about how far-reaching the deportation crackdown will become, officials like Matt Elliston, director of ICE’s Baltimore field office, insist that “the worst go first,” saying that those who are considered national security and public safety threats are considered highest on the priority list.

Elliston also emphasized that ICE is not conducting mass immigration “raids,” as some reports are suggesting. “I really hate the word ‘raids’ because it gives people the wrong impression, as if we’re just arbitrarily going door to door and saying, ‘Show us your papers,’” he told the Associated Press. “Nothing could be further from the truth.” The AP further noted that Elliston has “constantly been on the phone” since Trump took office last week “trying to dispel rumors about what ICE is doing and who is getting arrested.”

As Family Research Council President Tony Perkins pointed out during Monday’s “Washington Watch,” while “everyone but the criminals are happy that these violent … immigrants that are here illegally are being removed,” there is widespread concern about immigrants who “have been in this country because of our broken system for decades, that have families that are very much a part of the community. What’s the next step here?”

Republican lawmakers like Senator Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) say they concur with Perkins and sympathize with immigrants who have been longstanding jobholders and community members, insisting that immigration reform is needed.

“With regard to people who’ve been here decades, I think we have to have a different track [than with criminals],” he contended. “The president has, in many cases, been much more open to different pathways for Dreamers and others than most Republicans. But I also think it becomes a bit of a negotiating tool at the same time, because to really deal with the problem, we have to fix our legal and our illegal immigration system to make sure that our economy can meet its potential. We should have a skills-based immigration policy. If you need more engineers or surgeons, we should have more H-1Bs. If you need more farm workers, we should have more H-2As. We just don’t have that flexibility in our system. Every other country in the world does, but we do not.”

Cramer went on to argue that Trump’s aggressive approach to enforcing immigration laws is bringing balance back to an issue that became chaotic during the open-border policies of the Biden years.

“[Trump’s policy] really sends the message to the other countries,” he observed. “Look what [Trump] did over the weekend with the president of Colombia. [O]ther would-be illegal immigrants are looking at what’s going on in the last week in the United States and going, ‘I think I’ll change my plans next week. I’m not going to try to get into the United States.’ … I think you’re going to see a big shift in the behavior of countries and would-be illegal immigrants that will help sort of work through this.”

Cramer concluded by insisting that the time is now for Congress to come up with needed immigration reforms. “But we do have to get our house in order when it comes to the one million plus illegal immigrants that come in every year, about 800,000 or more of which don’t bring a skill set or an education that’s in high demand in an economy that is constrained by a workforce shortage. So there’s a lot of opportunity here for people on all sides to come up with solutions, I think.”