Mass Deportations Now
Why the President must stay the course on his most significant campaign promise
Everyone remembers the photo of little Liam Ramos, the 5-year-old migrant child pictured in ICE custody in Minneapolis wearing a sky blue bunny hat. The media turned him into a symbol of Trump’s limitless cruelty.
The truth was more complex: ICE tried to give Liam to his mother, but she refused to open the door to her own son, leaving ICE no choice but to detain Liam and send him with his father to an ICE detention center.
A judge ordered them released on the grounds that they had a pending asylum case, yet to anyone whose brain isn’t addled by TDS, it was always obvious that the Ramos family’s asylum case was fraudulent—something an immigration court found in March, ordering the family immediately deported to their home country of Ecuador.
In a recent interview with CBS News, Liam’s mother admitted that they were economic migrants. “We did not come to this country to cause any harm. I want to give my children a better future,” Erika Ramos said.
By their own admission, the Ramoses came here illegally as economic migrants, then falsely claimed asylum in order to stay. And if you look closely, you can see in that interview that Erika Ramos is now pregnant. Should she manage to wait out the clock appealing the judge’s deportation order—something the liberal media and NGO industrial complex are trying their best to help her do—her child will be a U.S. citizen.
The Democrats turned the Ramos family into a cause célèbre. What they actually are is a paragon of a very unique form of defrauding the American people, supported by immigration judges and NGOs, the liberal press, and Birthright Citizenship, all of which incentivize the behaviors that the Ramoses engaged in—breaking our laws and lying again and again—and which Donald Trump was elected to reverse.
The Democrats and their mainstream media keep insisting that Trump promised he would only deport “the worst of the worst”—meaning violent criminals, yet here he is carrying out mass deportations on harmless abuélas selling fruit on the street, day laborers in the Home Depot parking lot just trying to earn a living, and sweet, innocent families like the Ramoses who never harmed anyone. All they want is a better life, a better future for their children!
They are wrong. Donald Trump won the election by promising to carry out the greatest mass deportation program in American history. Immigration has been his signature issue dating back to 2015. The signs at his rallies don’t read, “Deport the Worst of the Worst!” They read “Mass Deportations Now.”
This agenda was popular in 2016 but it was even more so in 2024, thanks to the decision by the Biden administration that preceded Trump to open the border completely, allowing 10-15 million migrants to stream in unobstructed.
There’s a unique kind of chutzpah involved in the Left lecturing the Right about how exactly the Right is allowed to fix the problem created by the Left.
There’s a unique kind of chutzpah involved in the Left lecturing the Right about how exactly the Right is allowed to fix the problem created by the Left.
What’s more, in poll after poll after poll, the majority of Americans continue to support deporting not just criminals, but every single illegal migrant. It’s not just MAGA. Even after the much publicized shootings in Minneapolis, a Harvard/Harris poll found that 52% of Americans support deporting all illegal aliens. A Marquette poll found that 56% of Americans support deporting all illegal aliens. A Cygnal poll found that a whopping 61% of Americans support deporting all illegal aliens.
It’s true that those numbers jump astronomically when it comes to illegal aliens accused of committing a crime—to 80% of Americans. But a clear and consistent majority continues to support mass deportations. Those numbers haven’t changed at all since Trump campaigned on the issue.
To the Left, supporting mass deportations is a sign of racism, what they conveniently cast as the white working class’s deplorable xenophobia as an alibi for the Democrats losing labor. Progressives demand we have compassion for the people coming here illegally and demanding the right to stay. But you can understand why someone would try to falsify their way into a country with a higher standard of living so their children can have a better life while acknowledging that it is fraud, and fraud must have consequences or it will continue unabated.
The goal Trump set out to accomplish, deporting every illegal migrant, remains a noble one.
The latest estimates from the administration are that 3 million illegal migrants have been deported or self deported, a great start to the campaign. Yet, there is evidence that Trump himself is waffling on it after the dramatic footage that came out of Minneapolis, in which two American citizens were shot dead while impeding ICE in its efforts. A Politico analysis found that “The Trump administration quietly shifted its immigration messaging in the weeks after its violent operation in Minneapolis that included the fatal shooting of two Americans, largely dropping mentions of ‘mass deportations’ as public sentiment shifted against the aggressive tactics.” President Trump also reportedly told his inner circle that some of the mass deportation tactics went too far. “In conversations with top advisers and his wife Melania, Trump has become convinced that some of his administration’s deportation policies have gone too far, and voters don’t like the term ‘mass deportation,’” the WSJ reported. The president wants to see more attention on arresting “bad guys” according to the WSJ’s sources. Trump has also flirted with a form of amnesty for farm workers, a position sometimes expressed by Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins on Fox News. The White House won’t commit to opposing the The Dignity Act, which would allow people who have been here illegally for over five years to qualify for legal status.
This would be a huge mistake—and a betrayal of what MAGA really wants. There’s a lot of talk in the mainstream media about a “MAGA divide” when it comes to things like foreign policy, or the Epstein files, or Israel. The media frequently prognosticates that this time, Trump has really done it, and his base is abandoning him in droves. It’s always nonsense. On foreign policy, Epstein, Israel, or Iran, President Trump knows his base better than anyone. But there is one area that could cost him the support of even his most ardent fans, and it’s going soft on mass deportations.
There is enormous pressure on him to abandon this cause. The Democrats have recognized that the Biden open border was the most important factor in President Trump’s 2024 victory. As a result, they now begrudgingly acknowledge that we need a secure border. Some, looking at the massive support for deporting criminals, will even acknowledge that you can deport illegal migrants who commit crimes. But they have turned that grudging admission into an exhortation: But don’t you dare deport anyone else!
A piece from CBS News was a classic of this genre. “Less than 14% of those arrested by ICE in Trump’s 1st year back in office had violent criminal records, document shows,” per CBS. “Nearly 60% of ICE arrestees over the past year had criminal charges or convictions,” according to internal DHS documents. “But among that population, the majority of the criminal charges or convictions are not for violent crimes.”
The piece was shared breathlessly on social media as proof that President Trump was going way beyond the mandate given to him by the American people. Unstated yet heavily implied by the piece is that not only should economic migrants be allowed to stay, but so should all the non-violent felons. According to CBS, it’s immoral to deport identity thieves, fraudsters, drunk drivers, smugglers, distributers of child pornography, and human traffickers—because these crimes can be committed non-violently.
The pressure campaign against mass deportations doesn’t just come from the Left. You now have Republicans pushing The Dignity Act, which is a form of amnesty no matter how hard they try to deny it. Meanwhile, the open-border supporting libertarian CATO Institute is forever pointing out that immigrants, both legal and illegal, commit fewer crimes than native born Americans. The implication is clear: Because immigrants commit fewer crimes, we should eagerly accept those crimes they do commit as not a big deal.
The logic is despicable. We’re stuck with our fellow citizens, for better or worse. But every crime committed by an illegal migrant is preventable, and thus that much more unforgivable.
But while the criminal angle is important, even more so is the labor side of it. It’s not, after all, because Americans are deplorable racists that they support mass deportations. It’s because the law of supply and demand applies to labor. When employers have access to a larger pool of available labor, especially one that includes illegals, that means less wages for working-class American citizens, forced to compete with illegal migrants for jobs in construction, landscaping, janitorial services, agriculture, and as domestics.
The elites (on both sides) will claim that these are “jobs Americans won’t do.” That’s nonsense, a self-serving myth: There’s not a single industry in America in which illegal labor represents more than a 30% share of the labor force, and that includes agriculture. Even when you narrow it down to who picks the crops—something we’re told every day no American will do—52% of those doing that job are American citizens.
The truth is, these are jobs Americans won’t do for those wages—wages conveniently slashed by a glut of illegal migrants willing to work for less wages, fewer benefits, and with much less workplace protection.
The truth is, these are jobs Americans won’t do for those wages—wages conveniently slashed by a glut of illegal migrants willing to work for less wages, fewer benefits, and with much less workplace protection.
A rentier caste of elites who consume the labor of the working class have created a self-beneficial myth which amounts to wage theft of their American neighbors. Embarrassed perhaps by their contempt for people who clean toilets for a living, they’d rather hire someone here illegally who’s so grateful for the job they won’t complain. They cannot imagine that millions of their fellow Americans get dignity from these jobs, though they used to get much more, when they paid a living wage.
Of course, not all illegal migrants are working; some are getting generous welfare assistance in the form of food stamps, free health care (of a much higher standard than many working-class Americans can afford), and free public schooling for their children.
This is why so many support mass deportations: They are sick of being robbed of the American Dream, whether it’s in the form of wage theft or housing and healthcare competition. They are sick of being asked to subsidize their own disinheritance in the country that is supposed to be theirs. It’s because what makes us a country is having a national border and respect for the rule of law, and you can’t have those things if there are zero consequences for breaking the law, for entering illegally, for overstaying visas, and for fake asylum claims.
The Democrats and their media demand we have compassion for the people lying to come here. But where is the compassion for working-class Americans who have to compete with them for jobs, whose taxpayer dollars go to subsidizing their free health care, whose children have that much less attention from their teachers in public schools?
Whether it’s at the expense of the working class or in the hardship migrants face crossing the Darien Gap, where a third of women admit to being raped, this compassion of the leftist elites quickly curdles into cruelty.
Meanwhile, this “compassion” the elites are so proud of is actually naked economic benefit. They love the access to cheap labor, which is why they always bemoan the deportation of nannies and Home Depot day laborers. But for working-class Americans, for American nannies and construction workers and truckers, mass migration has been an unbelievable hardship.
Mass deportations are a noble goal because they create a tight labor market, which puts money in the pockets of working class Americans. Trump accomplished this in his first term and he’s doing it again now—if he will only stay the course. And it’s not enough just to close the border. Most illegal migrants are here by overstaying their visas. To allow this kind of fraud to continue unabated sends the message that all you have to do is get here and no one will have the political will to make you leave. That’s called an incentive.
This is not to say that every single ICE agent, especially those working under Greg Bovino, now relieved of his duties, have covered themselves in glory. Some of the tactics may have gone too far. Sending in Tom Homan to complete the mission was a brilliant move on the part of the President. Homan gave the best version of the case: The administration would prioritize the worst of the worst, the criminals, but from their point of view, coming to the United States illegally is a crime, meaning every illegal is fair game.
“When I say prioritize public safety threats, they’re just a priority,” Homan said in February. “I’ve said it many times, if you’re in the country illegally, you’re not off the table. If we find you while we’re out there looking, you’re going to be arrested.” He went on: “If we send a message to the world that, ‘Well, if you enter the country illegally, that’s a crime but don’t worry about it – just don’t commit another crime and we’re not looking for you,’ we can’t send that message.”
Elites on the Right seem to think that only illegal immigration is a problem. But given that for MAGA, the labor question is an important one, there’s a strong appetite to control competition from legal immigrants, too. H1-Bs allow employers to pay immigrants much less than Americans. They allow corporations to give those jobs to foreigners, rather than seeking out home grown talent. They slashed the wages in STEM, meaning our brightest kids no longer seek out those jobs. They replaced huge parts of the tech industry with foreign labor.
So it’s a massive victory that H1-Bs are down by 45%. Per CATO, the decline in new H1-B visas is down 90%, after the President imposed a $100,000 fee on companies hiring immigrants. Entry by asylum seekers is down 90%, and at the border it’s down 99%. Visa issuances are down by half. The analysts at CATO are bemoaning the fact that legal immigration has fallen, too, seemingly incapable of formulating the thought that it’s not just asylum claims but asylum fraud that’s fallen by 99%.
That’s what MAGA voted for.
The President should continue tuning out the noise and keep the deportations coming. He has the support of the American people—including many who would never admit it to a pollster.
I used to be homeless, and I have volunteered with my homeless neighbors for decades. You know who REALLY resents illegal migrants? Homeless people. I can't tell you how many homeless people (and their loved ones) have expressed resentment that so many resources are dedicated to non-citizens, while Americans with mental illness and addiction are left to suffer and die on the streets. I have seen one too many "enlightened" progressives step over the bodies of their homeless neighbors to attend an illegal immigrant "rights" rally. This cruelty and hypocrisy has got to stop.
The rule of law. Period. This is not a Chinese menu