A change in leadership at the Department of Homeland Security is a good time to assess what needs to change and what doesn’t when it comes to two of President Donald Trump’s top campaign promises: border security and mass deportations.
The Trump administration secured the border very quickly and successfully in its first year. Enforcing this is imperative to prevent new threats to national security, public safety, and the economy from entering the US
However, with new DHS leadership, the administration can better pursue mass deportations. Limiting them to “the worst of the worst” results in only hundreds of thousands of deportations, while there were at least 20 million deportable aliens living in the US at the start of Trump’s second term. In this Phase 2, the government should open the window to significantly increase deportation rates.
Candidate Trump promised the largest mass deportation effort in American history, and not just the worst criminal aliens. America needs the government to deliver on that promise to restore the rule of law, relieve American taxpayers of unsustainable welfare, education, health care and other costs, and open college and employment opportunities to American students, graduates and workers left out by foreign students, cheaper labor and fraud.
NOEM WORKS TO BOTH BORDERS, SAYS ICE WILL NOT BE SCREENED BY SANCTUARY OFFICIALS WHO WANT TO ‘CREATE CONFLICT’
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has criticized Everett’s mayor after she issued a directive banning federal agents from entering non-public areas of city facilities without a warrant. (Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
After the bombings in Iran, Americans are now wondering whether Iranian and other terrorist sleeper cells, which faced no obstacles entering the country during President Joe Biden’s four years of open borders, could activate and carry out terrorism in the US.
It is important to note that known and suspected terrorists often do not have a criminal history. In fact, they are often chosen for their ‘clean’ backgrounds. So DHS will have to use other tools to identify and locate threats to national security, including workplace enforcement, investigating immigration and other government benefit claims, as well as financial accounts.
These and other instruments must also be used with regard to all deportable aliens to achieve the promised and necessary mass deportations. Although self-deportation is a valuable tool, deportable aliens without a criminal record will not choose to depart on their own if they see no risk that DHS will deport them. As long as staying in the US illegally is low risk and high reward, deportable aliens will continue to stay here.
As such, DHS under new leadership should change that risk calculus so that continued stays pose high risk and low reward. Achieving this will require revoking the work permits of deportable aliens and enforcing the law against unauthorized workers and their employers, as well as preventing remittances from such ill-gotten work from leaving the country.
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Carrying out mass deportations will bring more false claims from the left against ICE. During Trump’s second term, both DHS and the White House consistently and effectively refuted the left’s false ICE allegations, which continue to come under scrutiny. It is important that DHS continues to undermine such false claims with the crucial facts that the left deliberately omits.
But we also need much more transparency from DHS regarding ICE deportation numbers. ICE reported such data monthly, but has not done so since the Trump administration began in January 2025. Also, DHS has not reported how many aliens used the CBP Home app to deport themselves.
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To give the American public confidence that DHS is indeed carrying out mass deportations, the Department should regularly report the number of removals from the U.S. interior versus return on border flights and maritime interdictions, as well as the number of self-departures, including on-time and early departures, and use of the CBP Home app.
The government has used different components and definitions to calculate removal numbers over the course of several administrations. It is important to understand this administration’s methodology to determine how well it is pursuing President Trump’s signature campaign promise and the policies that will define its legacy.
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