7 Policies That Can Make Trump’s Mass Deportation of 15 Million Illegals Possible
Perhaps the most critical promise Donald Trump made during his 2024 election campaign was that he would begin a mass deportation of illegal aliens starting on day 1 of his presidency. We’re not just talking about targeting the gang members or the people who committed murder, but anyone who crossed the border illegally.
This is not going to be easy for a wide variety of reasons. Democrats have worked very hard to get illegals into America in order to turn them into voters one day, so they’re unlikely to be cooperative about deporting them in many places. Business owners that rely on illegal aliens are going to howl in the ears of their representatives (some of them Republicans) and demand that they fight this. The personnel needed is also lacking although it’s possible the military could be used to fill that gap under some circumstances. Of course, the illegals aren’t going to cooperate either and for the most part, we don’t know their locations or even necessarily their real names or that they’re here at all. We don’t even really have a good idea of how many illegal aliens are here because the estimates that are out there are all unverifiable guesswork. It could be anywhere from 10-30 million, although most of the guesswork is closer to the lower end of that range.
So, how do we do this? We’re not going to send the military house-to-house and set up roadblocks all across the country, checking that everyone who comes through is here legally. The whole process has to be a lot more subtle and multi-layered than that. There are a lot of tactics that will help and here are seven of the most important ones the Trump administration can adopt to make a mass deportation of illegal aliens possible.
1) Stem the flow of illegals part 1 - reinstitute the Remain in Mexico Program: At this point, claims of asylum are mainly used to game our immigration laws. Illegals enter the country, ask for asylum, then are released to go wherever they want. That’s why Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy was such an enormous success that Biden had to cancel it. It forced illegals to file for asylum BEFORE they got to the United States. An even better option would be no longer handing out asylum at all for a couple of decades, but sadly that doesn’t seem to be on the table. Yet.
2) Stem the flow of illegals part 2 - control the border: It does no good to deport people if they’re just going to walk back over the border. That means we have to both improve our border security (a wall would certainly help with that) AND stop our catch-and-release policies that allow even illegals we capture to enter the country and move around freely. Any illegal we catch needs to be detained until we can deport them. No more, “Hey, make sure to show up for your court date in a year. We know you’ll be there (wink, wink) and enjoy the United States in the interim.”
3) Cut off the jobs part 1 - Operation Vanguard: This would require ICE to target major employers of illegals all across the country. They would subpoena their employment records, pick out the problematic Social Security numbers, and then show up to fix them. Some of them would be Americans who had Social Security numbers. They would get the issues with their Social Security numbers fixed, but the illegals would all flee instead of meeting with the Feds over a fake Social Security number. If large numbers of people were getting paid under the table, they would have a good chance of figuring this out as well.
If this was repeated multiple times, it would make these large employers of illegals (meat packing plants, corporate farms, etc) no-go zones for illegals to get jobs. This was done back in 1998 and was called Operation Vanguard. It was stopped BECAUSE IT WORKED. It can absolutely work again and if we carried it out on a large scale, it would change the game, both for illegals and for crooked businesses that hire them instead of American workers.
4) Cut off the jobs part 2 - E-Verify: The vast majority of illegals are not getting paid under the table, they’re giving their employer a fraudulent Social Security number. This should be something the government requires everyone but the smallest employers to immediately check, “Oh, the Social Security number you’re giving me doesn’t exist” or, “There is already someone with a different name using this Social Security number across the country in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.”
Basically, this already exists, but it’s not mandatory. It’s called E-Verify. Between this and targeting large employers of illegals, it would make it extremely difficult for most illegals to get jobs. If illegals couldn’t find work here, they’d have no reason to be here and they’d self-deport. If millions of illegals just went home on their own, it would be good for America and save ICE an awful lot of work.
5) Pressuring sanctuary cities to cooperate with ICE: Sanctuary cities could make life much easier for everyone by simply turning over illegals they catch to ICE for deportation. That’s the easy way for everybody. Trump’s border Czar Tom Homan has explained what the hard way would look like:
"If you let us in the jail, we can arrest the bad guy in the jail and in the safety and security of the jail. One officer could do that, but when you release a public safety threat back into the community, you put the community at risk. You put my officers at risk. You put the alien at risk.
Here's what's going to happen – you release that guy in the community, I'm going to send an entire team to go look for the guy in your community. And what's going to happen? We'll find that guy. And when we find that guy, there's probably going to be others that are not a priority. However, if they're in the country illegally, they'll be arrested, too, because we're not going to tell an immigration officer like this [Biden] administration did, that you're going to turn your back on an illegal immigrant.
When you're an immigration officer, you have an oath to uphold, so you are forcing us into a community in large numbers where other non-priority aliens will be arrested. That's the exact result you don't want, so let us in the jail. It's safer for everybody."
Trump also could, should, and probably will cut off every dime possible of federal money being sent to sanctuary cities that he can get away with in the courts. Are these cities ready to lose massive amounts of federal money to protect drunk drivers and wife-beaters who aren’t even American citizens? We should certainly find out. Getting any illegal caught by local law enforcement out of the country would make ICE’s job a lot easier.
6) Creating an effective VISA program: One of the dirty little secrets of illegal immigration is that it’s possible as many as half of the illegals here got here by overstaying their VISAs, not sneaking across the border. That has to be a best guess not just because we don’t know how many illegal aliens are here, but because many of our ports of entry don’t note it when travelers leave. So, if someone came here on a VISA, we often have no idea if they left when they were supposed to or just stayed here. We often don’t screen VISA applicants very well, don’t monitor what they’re doing when they’re here, and rubber stamp changes or extensions. No matter how good a job we do on the border, if we don’t start treating VISAs with more seriousness, we will never fix this problem.
7) Heavier penalties for being caught in the United States illegally the first time: Unfortunately, this one would definitely need congressional approval, but it would be very effective. Simply put, we shouldn’t allow anyone caught in the United States illegally to EVER enter the country legally and/or become a citizen.
Perhaps initially, we could give a six-month grace period and allow anyone who checked in on their way out of the country to avoid that penalty, which might encourage millions of people to self-deport, but afterward? They’d face lifetime penalties.
Putting this into place would create enormous pressure on illegals both to self-deport AND to not come here illegally, to begin with. After all, there are a lot of illegal aliens who believe that if they can stay in the United States long enough, they will eventually be given American citizenship. Taking that off the table would strongly encourage people to come here legally or not at all.