The second Trump administration has radically reduced illegal migration. The border control blitzkrieg brought a quick victory. But from now on, the campaign will be a long process: finding, arresting and removing deportable aliens in the US.
The most dramatic change since President Donald Trump took office has occurred at the southern border, where almost no aliens caught entering illegally are now released. Under Biden, catch-and-release was routine and tens of thousands of illegal aliens were imported into an overburdened immigration system that takes years to complete. If their asylum application fails, someone must deport them from the country.
This month, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) claimed it had deported more than half a million illegal aliens since Trump took office. They hope to reach the 600,000 mark by the end of the year.
TRUMP’S DHS Praises Huge Number of Illegal Immigrants Deported As Dems Lash at Ice
Additionally, researchers at the Center for Immigration Studies estimate that more than a million additional illegal aliens have left the U.S. on their own since January 2025.
During that same time, DHS says it has arrested 485,000 illegal aliens. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) says that 70% of them have been charged or convicted of a crime committed in the US (in addition to being in the country illegally). Considering that a year ago there were at least 435,000 aliens with criminal convictions in the US, and another 200,000 with pending charges, that’s easy to believe.
Most of these criminal aliens were on ICE’s non-detainee list, meaning they were living freely in the community. Very few were checked. Some of those ICE arrested since January will have been deported, but will most likely remain as their immigration cases drag on.
The American left was stunned to see the speed and ease with which Trump proved that it was lack of will, not means, that shut down the illegal migration path from Yuma to the Darien Gap.
For four years they wanted Americans to believe that mass illegal migration was inevitable – caused by forces beyond US control. That story has collapsed, just like the tent camps that American taxpayers paid for a few years ago to house millions of illegal immigrants.
The loss of this excuse forced the left to change course. Their new strategy — now that the flow has ended — is to keep as many of Biden’s millions of illegal aliens here as possible.
Their tactic is to use the national media, left-wing activists and illegal aliens themselves to portray any enforcement as brutal. They demonize federal agents as fascist thugs even though they are just doing their jobs and enforcing our laws. They use the word “Nazi” as only those who are completely ignorant of European history can.
And they see every arrested illegal alien as an angel, regardless of the facts in each case.
For the left, illegal aliens are always dutiful parents, hard-working strivers, and pillars of the community. They make media heroes of the likes of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an alleged wife abuser, gang member and professional alien smuggler who is portrayed as a devoted father ensnared in an unfair, heartless immigration system.
Left-wing “abolitionists” believe in the dismantling of the “carceral state,” that is, the justice system, from police to judges to prisons. New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wants to “close many of our prisons and explore just alternatives to incarceration.” Her fellow Democratic Socialist, the newly elected mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, wants to stop punishing crimes. Not so long ago he was against building prisons.
“Abolitionists” also generally believe in an international right to migrate, so they want to end all immigration detention.
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As I write in The Ten Woke Commandments (You Must Not Obey), the Western world is in the midst of an epic battle between the global left, which wants open borders and international governance, and conservatives who understand that strong nation-states are the essential protectors of citizens and the building blocks of a secure, prosperous world.
Over the next three years, we will see this battle taking place on the streets, especially in “sanctuary” cities like Portland and Los Angeles, led by far-left mayors and city councils. Cities like New York and counties like Arlington, VA, that do not honor ICE detainees will force agents to find and detain dangerous criminals on the streets.
The next Democratic administration will not have a fig leaf of outside forces to hide behind as they reopen our borders to bring, release, and send back into the country millions of unknown, unvetted, and unqualified “asylum seekers.”
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If Trump resists overreach, holds his nerve, and supports federal agents to do their jobs safely no matter how fierce the opposition becomes, he will ensure that the federal order applies across the country by the end of his term. Americans will become accustomed to the rule of law being enforced again.
But if the “abolitionist” left – aided by the media and activist judges – can frustrate domestic enforcement enough to render federal immigration law toothless, we will face another nullification crisis.
