Veteran Journalist Dismantles Liberal Case Against Trump’s Deportation Plans: ‘It’s Easier Than You Think’
“Too many analysts [whom he refers to as deportation deniers] have confused what they want to be true with what actually is true.”
Since the start of fiscal year 2021, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has reported over 10.8 million border encounters, according to data from the House Committee on Homeland Security. This number does not include the millions of “gotaways” who entered the country undetected.
The Biden-Harris administration’s deliberate refusal to enforce U.S. immigration laws has caused significant harm to our national security, sovereignty, and the safety of American citizens.
In response, President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to launch the “largest deportation program in American history” on day one, aiming to remove at least one million illegal immigrants annually.
In a weekend op-ed published in The Kansas City Star, veteran journalist David Mastio pushed back hard against the naysayers who consider the plans “unrealistic” and say that “the effort will cost $1 trillion.”
Mastio started by noting that “too many analysts [whom he refers to as deportation deniers] have confused what they want to be true with what actually is true.” [Emphasis added.]
He dismissed their arguments as “bunk” and systematically dismantled each of their so-called “myths” using facts and historical data. Ultimately, he concluded that carrying out the deportations would be “easier than you think.”
The first is that it will cost too much. Mastio points out that, in the first two years of the Obama Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement “deported 250,000 people a year from the interior of the U.S. each year.”
The budget for these 500,000 deportations was $7.5 billion over two years or $3.74 billion annually in 2024 dollars, in what is called ICE’s Detention and Removal Budget. … Since then, that budget has gone up by 20% to $4.5 billion but we’re deporting a fraction of the number of immigrants we did before.
All we have to do is get back to the same efficiency we had in 2009 and 2010 to deport 300,000 (20% more than 250,000). Say the next 300,000 cost twice as much to deport — $9 billion and the next 300,000 cost twice as much again, or $18 billion. That’s 900,000 deportations a year for $31.5 billion annually. That doesn’t seem too crazy. And over a decade, that’s a third the cost critics complain of.
He argued that the mere existence of a large-scale national deportation effort will prompt at least 100,000 immigrants to “leave on their own” each year “to avoid encounters with ICE.”
“And that,” Mastio wrote, “is your million a year.”
That's a rate of 30,000 per year.
Obama deported 2.5 million people. https://t.co/rP5ucrlmem
— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) February 13, 2017
Various government agencies and think tanks have attempted to calculate the annual cost of the border crisis to the U.S., with estimates starting at $150 billion and climbing to $451 billion. From this perspective, $31.5 billion is a relative bargain.
Illegal immigrants are costing the American taxpayer $451,000,000,000 a year and rising pic.twitter.com/uMjxcBIJNS
— • ᗰISᑕᕼIᗴᖴ ™ • (@4Mischief) November 30, 2023
The second myth is that “we don’t know who to deport.” In reality, Mastio argued, the government already has enough undocumented immigrants on its radar to deport a million people annually for the next “five or six years.” This includes between “1 to 2 million” individuals who are “wanted or convicted criminals,” another 1.5 million who “are not criminals but have gone through the immigration court system and been denied legal status,” and nearly “4 million cases” currently stuck in the immigration court backlog.
As of July 2024, ICE has released 650,000 criminals into the US.
14,944 are murderers.
20,061 have been convicted of sexual assault.
105,461 have assault charges.
Under a new Trump administration we will see these people deported.
Start packing your bags. pic.twitter.com/hqeKvlH0V6
— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) December 11, 2024
The third myth is that mass deportations would violate individuals’ civil rights. Mastio contends that the groups in question have either “already received due process or are currently going through it under the system established by President Joe Biden.” As long as the Trump administration adheres to the law—and Trump has indicated that “he intends to follow the law to accomplish this”—there should be no civil rights issues during the first six years of deportations.
The final myth is that countries will refuse to accept their citizens back. During Trump’s first term, when leaders of several countries resisted the idea of readmitting some of their least desirable citizens or complying with newly established U.S. policies, Trump used financial leverage to ensure their cooperation. There’s little doubt he will use every available tool to get this done in a second term. (Mastio highlights several of these tools in his op-ed.)
I would remind those who doubt that Trump can accomplish this goal not to underestimate him. In April 2023, I wrote an op-ed titled “Maybe Trump CAN Win the General Election.” At the time, the general consensus was that while Trump might secure the GOP nomination, there was no way – with all of his baggage – he could win the general election. The post drew 927 comments – three times the usual number for an article – with most commenters saying it would never happen. Many claimed that the Democrats would rig the election.
Despite all the obstacles the Democrats put in his way, he won. And he will succeed again. He will accomplish this.
Elizabeth writes commentary for The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a member of the Editorial Board at The Sixteenth Council, a London think tank. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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Comments
The process is way easier than the lefty ideologues want it to be. Some on the center/left who haven’t fully consumed the kool aid but go with propaganda they have been presented are likely to be shocked by quickly an effective deportation process can be implemented.
There will be video and still images accompanying the sob stories that will upset some folks. IMO the way to counter the propaganda is to allow every US Citizen the ability to sponsor an asylum seeker. However they must house that person in their own residence (no stashing them in an apartment or shelter) and fund their existence in the USA; shelter, food, clothing, medical and of course the use of services to include reimbursing K-12 costs. Of course the spoils also mist assume civil liability for their actions as well.
Every time a lefty complains about deportation ask them whether they have signed on to individually sponsor an asylum seeker. Then ask them why they have an issue with deporting those already adjudicated with deportation orders.
Cut off their free stuff and watch how fast they self deport.
That’s how it should be. Sadly, you have to fight with our treasonous courts over that. Our courts have been working for the interests of illegal aliens for decades. It is insane.
Getting cold here in Chicago. Be great if thousands went back home where it’s warm.
Add in an “employment penalty” of $10K/illegal/day to cheating businesses, and the jobs will dry up fast. Put a 90% fee on remittances wired out of the country.
No freebies, no jobs, no reason to stay. Give them until Jan 20, at 12pm, to get out on their own, with everything they own. After that, seize all their belonging and bank accounts, and then deport them with prejudice.
In other words: HAMMERTIME!
No.
Starting with the 2 or three largest most notorious employers of illegals, you arrest and prosecute the entire management chain, from line supervisor to the CEO/Board of Directors/Owner.
Seize the entire business as fruit of criminal acts. Sell it.
Bulldoze and salt the earth of the facility. (ok, maybe not)
Cut all federal benefits to illegal aliens in the US.
Prohibit any State, local and private assistance (including churches and NGOs) under 8 USC 1324 -Harboring. Prosecute any who do – the code has big teeth, especially for those who harbored an alien who then commit crimes. Murder will get the harborer Life in prison or Death.
Perform prostitution style stings for employers of day laborers.
DO pursue and prosecute criminal illegals and cartels. A serious problem.
However, do not arrest or prosecute the rest of Illegals. That would create endless photo ops of the sniveling media.
If these folks cant work or eat or live anywhere but a cardboard box, they’ll self deport.
Offer generous assistance to those who agree to leave, airfare home.
E-verify for everything.
Make it illegal for anyone present in the USA illegally to have any kind of bank account ( credit, debit or loans of any kind).
Make it an automatic five year prison sentence for anyone who has been deported that re-enters the USA illegally.
Double or triple the fines for employers caught hiring illegal aliens.
The first step to take is the elimination of ALL services and privileges the illegals have been receiving. No food, no healthcare, no drivers licenses, no employment, no schooling, no shelter . . . no kidding.
The illegals should be made to want to leave. Those who do not willingly leave should be rounded up and deported.
I cannot agree with that. There are millions of illegals who have been here for a very long time and who are working and contributing. They should NOT be rounded up and deported. Focus on the criminals and phony asylum seekers of recent vintage.
They never had any right to be here and still don’t.
Period.
If they are deportable they are a criminal, because they broke the law coming in. So every single one of them should be deported for breaking the crime of entering the country illegally in addition to whatever they’ve done since they came in.
Not true. Many deportable people entered legally, and have committed no crime since. Illegally remaining in the USA is not a crime.
It’s a civil federal violation for which deportation is a punishment. Why are you always counsel for the defense?
Because its’ the truth. You just admitted that it’s the truth, which means the comment I replied to was NOT the truth. When people make false accusations against others, any decent person stands up for the accused. No matter who it is. Or do you decide your opinions based on whose ox is gored?
And there are many, many good people who have been waiting in line for years, shouldering the costs and time involved in coming in LEGALLY.
Illegals have no right to stay; they cheated. They are still free to go home, do the right thing and apply for legal immigration.
So, if someone breaks into your house, but takes out the trash and recycling, you will allow them to stay?
The illegals must leave, no matter how long they have been here. They are criminals, and we need to be rid of them.
The USA is not someone’s house. It’s not even someone’s property. The breaking-and-entering analogy is not a strong one.
The USA’s mission is to always be open to and welcoming of immigrants who come willing to work and contribute to making this a better and better country for all of us. As Julian Simon kept pointing out, population is a country’s most important asset, provided they’re not predators or parasites.
Someone such as we’re discussing here has proven by his behavior that he is the kind of person we want here, and whom we would have gladly invited in had we known. That we didn’t was our mistake, due to our not being mind-readers. But now that we do know, we should welcome him and not hassle him let alone deport him.
But we can’t throw the gates open for the entire world to descend on us; so we can’t announce, or even have our officials publicly discuss any kind of amnesty until the border is under strict control. Because unfortunately not everyone who wants to come is like this person.
Why should the law be annulled on their behalf? The ONLY ones I would look carefully at are the ones with citizen children(yes, I don’t want birthright citizenship to exist, but if the kid is already a citizen that is spilled milk. At least in those cases maybe there is something to talk about. Other wise, no, length of illegal occupation is not a mitigating factor.
While I would agree that the folks you describe shouldn’t be the first priority for deportation they ain’t immune. They gotta have permission to work in the USA and if unlawfully present they don’t have that permission. Then there’s the impact on US born workers in having to compete for jobs and the general suppression of wages from oversupply of workers. How about driving up cost of shelter/rent from increased demand? What about costs for expanding city services?
The employer sweeps in industries which tend to employ larger numbers of illegal aliens will take care of it. As will vigorously prosecuting the employers. Remember that these folks gotta have a valid SS # or taxpayer ID # to get on the books to receive a check and to pay taxes. Most don’t comply and the employers are complicit in that.
If you agree to make US workers and taxpayers whole from all damage imposed by illegal aliens then maybe we can have a.discussion about some sort of deal but not until then.
and deported to a country of OUR choosing.
The Rs have a major long-term opportunity if the Trump administration combines the deportation of criminals and (I don’t know the term as I write) those temporary refugees with the reintroduction and passage of H.R. 2 that would establish a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants who have been here for a long time and are working and contributing to our society.
Do this the right way, and the Hispanics (especially the Mexicans, who are by far the largest cohort) are going to be Republicans for decades. Also, there will be some mistakes, and they will need to have a process in place to rectify errors, including apologies and compensation when appropriate.
This will be a political and moral I.Q. test. Pass it, and the dividends will be enormous. The woke “progressives” are largely white liberals do not realize that the biggest victims of these criminals are Mexican immigrants, both legal and (kill me now) “undocumented.”
Small example. I live in a rural county with a noticeable contingent of legal Mexicans, one of whom is here legally on a green card. He is a refugee from a narco area of Mexico, and that guy would build Trump’s wall twice as high. He has started his own business here, and is succeeding and contributing. I have told him that the only difference between him and my maternal grandparents, refugees from the great German inflation of 1923, is which country he came from.
I have urged him to naturalize, but he’s been working so hard that he hasn’t had enough time to study for the language requirement. I have said: “Jose, you are already a great American. You and your family are exactly the kind of people who we want here.”
The Trump administration and the Republicans need to play their cards correctly on this stuff. If they do, the Rs will have an electoral lock for a very long time. I hope they will handle this with intelligence, appropriate compassion, and political acumen. Nothing would make me happier than for the “Latinx” script to be flipped on the “progressives.”
This CAN happen — if the Rs do it right.
He’s already on the right track; with a green card and a love of America.
Keep prodding him to get naturalized.
Republicans welcome good, honest immigrants like him. The deceptive Democrats conflate legal and illegal immigrants to spin wild “abuela” stories.
I think he is too worried about the language requirement, but one thing I did was to go to Amazon and get a set of Louis L’Amour books sent to his house. The following is a shaggy dog story but one of my favorites, and I hope people here will like it.
The Louis L’Amour books were an outgrowth of a chance meeting with a Sri Lankan immigrant about 10 years ago, whose father brought him to America when he was 6 years old. His father had somehow, back in Sri Lanka, gotten hold of Louis L’Amour books and used them to learn English. When he settled in Portland, Oregon about 40 years ago, he would take this guy and his sister out to ranches in Eastern Oregon and ask if there were any chores they could do, because he was trying to teach them the value of hard work. It always went well, he said. The ranchers loved it.
Now, keep in mind that the guy I am talking about was roughly as black as a block of anthracite coal. Not a whole lot of his kind in Eastern Oregon, that’s for sure. As he was growing up, he made a list of 10 things to do to make himself into a real American. He had done nine of them by the time he was in his 20s, working in a high-tech company on the west side of the mountains.
#10 was to ride in a rodeo, so he arranged to get enough time off three summers in a row to go to a rodeo school in Texas. First time on a horse, he was hooked on the energy of the animal, and endured the laughter of the cowboys. Second year, he was as good as they were. Third summer, he was better. He went on the rodeo circuit as a roughstock (bucking events) cowboy, and became known as “the bronco from Sri Lanko.”
In his early 30s, when we met him (he resembled the sheriff in “Blazing Saddles.” Tall, handsome, impeccably dressed in jeans, starched white snap-button shirt, straw hat and cowboy boots, But he was then only a spectator, having been injured and no longer able to ride. We’d spotted him at a small rodeo in Spray, OR, population 120 but whose Memorial weekend rodeo that bats well above its weight and attracts a couple thousand people.
I had wanted to introduce myself there, but didn’t because what would I say? “You’re black and I was wondering … ?” After the show we drove 60 miles to the town on Mitchell, also about 150 people, and saw him on the porch of the historic Oregon Hotel, at which point I introduced myself. I went to the general store and got a 6-pack of PBR, brought it back and we chatted.
He laughed about the white liberals in Portland and how politically correct they were about him being black. He much preferred the people on the east side of the mountains. “They can see me from a long way off,” he said. And they took him as he came. What do you do, do you fit in, and it always worked out.
So I told all of this to Jose, the Mexican refugee from a narco area.
“I am going to send you Louis L’Amour books. The English is plain but not stupid, and the stories are classic American literature that has been turned into all kinds of Western movies, and you will learn English.”
I stopped haranguing him about naturalization because I was worried about laying it on too thick, but it’s been long enough now that I think I will raise the subject again the next time I see him. Bottom line: Yep, there are criminal illegals and Mexican gangs, and they should definitely be dealt with more aggressively, but not at the expense of the people who are already fine Americans, working hard and contributing.
The Republican Party has a golden opportunity here, and I hope they don’t blow it.
It can’t be done at the same time. There can be no official talk of amnesty until after the border is sealed and secure, and the first few million criminals and obvious undesirables have been deported. Then we can start talking amnesty. Raising the possibility now, when the border is wide open, will only cause millions more to rush to get in under the wire, before it’s too late.
It’s OK for us to talk about amnesty here. I do believe that once the border is secure and the obvious undesirables are gone public sentiment will change, public sentiment will change. I think those who are genuinely contributing can be reasonably confident that by the time their turn comes to be deported the deportations will have stopped. I think that at that time there will be an amnesty. But if I were in an official position, in the administration or in Congress, I would keep my mouth shut about it in any public forum, and only discuss it behind closed doors.
p.s.: Jose doesn’t know it, but if he naturalizes, I will be there for his swearing in, and will give him the flag that my mother was given when it flew over the Capitol in recognition of his service as a tail gunner on a B-24 in the Pacific Theater in WW II.
In recognition of my father’s service …
Stop paying them to be here and they won’t be.
The real shock is that the marxist tabloid KC Star published something other than leftist drivel.
America is not just an Economic Zone. Even setting the broader cultural issues aside for the moment, closing the border is insufficient to consider amnesty while the education system churns out America-haters. Reform the Cathedral, then we can talk. Until then, we’re still a failing nation.
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