Mike Lindell speaks at the Minnesota Republican Convention in Duluth, Saturday May 30, 2026. (Photo by Glen Stubbe/Minnesota Reformer)
ST. PAUL, Minn. (Minnesota Reformer) — In another surprising twist in the race for the Republican nomination for governor, Mike Lindell released an 18-page, five-pronged plan to reform the federal immigration system by creating a path to temporary legal residency for working immigrants.
In an interview with Washington Examiner, Lindell, the Trump-endorsed pillow mogul, said he believes in second chances for people whose only offense is entering the country without authorization.
“I met with the illegals down in San Diego,” Lindell said. “I met with a lot of them and I heard their stories.”
The proposal, described in the document as a “fiscally responsible, legally grounded, and operationally achievable alternative to mass deportation,” quickly drew the ire of right-wing media outlets and one of Lindell’s primary opponents, who referred to the document as an “amnesty” plan.
“I am shocked to see something like that coming out from a Republican candidate,” Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth, who is running against Lindell in the primary election, said in a interview. “It flies in the face of what President Trump has done.”
Another problem for Lindell: The Minnesota governor has no control over immigration policy.
Lindell’s proposal involves immediately deporting all undocumented immigrants with a felony or gross misdemeanor conviction, while creating a 120-day window for undocumented immigrants to apply for a new “worker visa card,” which would grant temporary legal status contingent on continued work and no criminal convictions.
After the deadline to apply for a visa passes, businesses employing undocumented workers would face criminal penalties, and those workers would be subject to deportation.
Lindell also proposes requiring employers to report all cash payments to employees and imposing an English-language requirement for drivers’ licenses.
The plan would have no path to citizenship, and immigrants would be ineligible for the social safety net programs their tax dollars fund, including Social Security and Medicare. It would codify undocumented people as permanent outsiders, but end the brutal deportation campaign.
The proposal flies in the face of Trump’s mass-deportation agenda, just one week after Trump endorsed Lindell, pushing him to the top of primary polls.
The plan never mentions the state of Minnesota.
In the hours since news of his plan broke, Lindell seemed to backtrack, denying that his plan is in any way an amnesty.
He also posted on X his support for Trump’s mass deportation agenda: “As always, I stand with President Trump and fully support his policies to deport illegal aliens from the United States,” in apparent contradiction of the plan he released just hours before.
Primary Election Day is Aug. 11.
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