Immigration Enforcement Without the Melodrama

Very quietly, ICE is getting the job done.

It turns out President Trump’s promised “mass deportations” won’t require dragnets and cattle cars after all.

This summer ICE racked up the largest numbers of arrests of illegal aliens ever recorded, with more on the way.

And all without the theatrics that culminated in the shooting of two Americans by DHS officers in Minneapolis.

The intentionally provocative approach of ousted DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and her field commander, Border Patrol agent Greg Bovino, was thrilling for the more excitable elements on both the Right and the Left. One side wanted revenge for Biden’s and DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s truly lawless and harmful border policies, while the anti-borders side was practically giddy with euphoria at having their fantasies of impending fascism seemingly confirmed.

President Trump probably appreciated some of the theatrics too, but also saw that the shooting of two American citizens—however much their conduct may have warranted it—was eroding support for his immigration agenda.

In response, he sent Border Czar Tom Homan to de-escalate the situation in Minneapolis, and nationwide. The number of arrests did indeed drop immediately afterward, leading some of those excitable immigration hawks to despair.

But Homan made clear at the time that there would be a change in tactics, but not in goals. And he’s been as good as his word.

The total number of ICE arrests in December 2024, the last full month of the Biden/Mayorkas reign of error, was less than 9,000 removals; about the same number as during the peak of COVID, when immigration enforcement, like the rest of America, was largely on hold.

That rose to about 40,000 in December 2025, before the change in personnel and tactics caused a drop to about 30,000 in February of this year.

But the new, lower-key approach, combined with the infusion of new resources from the One Big Beautiful Bill, has led to a steady increase in the number of arrests, surpassing the Noem/Bovino peak by June 2026 and reaching a record 50,000 in July and August.

Some dismiss this as a drop in the bucket. And that might be true if Greg Bovino’s preposterous claims that there are 100 million or more illegal aliens (equal to 30% of the total U.S. population!) were true. But they’re not.

My colleagues at the Center for Immigration Studies have estimated that the illegal population declined by 2.3 million, nearly 15%, during the first 18 months of the Trump administration, from 15.8 million when President Biden left office, to 13.5 million in July of this year. Whatever the true number of completed deportations is (the administration has been reluctant to release the numbers), there’s no doubt that much, if not most, of this decline has been due to self-deportations—illegal aliens packing up and leaving on their own.

The number of legal immigrants also fell, for a total reduction in the foreign-born population of 2.9 million, the first net decline since the 1930s.

But how can this be? Isn’t the illegal population much larger than a measly 13.5 million? After all, the president has said that Biden let in 20 million illegal aliens, while Bovino has been busy retailing his ridiculous 107 million number on conservative media.

Like all surveys, the Census Bureau surveys that our estimates are drawn from have margins of error, meaning the real number of illegal immigrants could be higher.

But not that much higher.

As unlikely as it may seem, illegal immigrants do respond to government surveys, and there’s been no drop in response rates with the advent of the current administration. What’s more, all the decline in the illegal population is from Latin American non-citizens who’ve arrived since 1980—which overlaps nicely with the profile of illegal aliens.

If there really were 10 or 20 million more illegal aliens than we think, we would notice. For instance, demographers have a pretty good idea of the demographic profile of the illegal population—including the share who are women of child-bearing age—so if the number were dramatically higher, there would be more children. A figure of 30 million illegals would have to mean that millions of children were born off the grid and aren’t going to school. In a country as vast as ours, I’m sure that happens, but the idea that millions of illegals are giving birth at home and home-schooling their children is ridiculous.

But if some on the Right minimize DHS’s success in reducing the illegal population, many on the Left are howling because those deported are not exclusively the “worst of the worst.” Recent data suggests that about half those arrested by ICE in July were convicted criminals or had pending charges, while half were arrested for civil immigration violations.

Sob stories of the hard-working father picked up after dropping his kid off at school, or the selfless nursing home aide forced to leave the country are a staple of media coverage of immigration (even as they ignore the decade-old deportation order or the lies told to the consular officer during the visa interview).

But the administration is partly to blame for the traction these tropes get. If half of arrests are of criminals, almost all the public messaging—from the president down to the ICE press office—is about its removal of child rapists and other scum. Everybody is for that (almost), but the public also needs to be informed of the benefits to American workers and taxpayers of routine immigration enforcement. The administration needs to make clear that ordinary illegals have to be removed not merely for the integrity of the system, but also because there’s a reason we have limits on immigration. The arrival of people beyond those limits—illegal immigration—loosens labor markets, especially for less-skilled workers, undermining their bargaining power. What’s more, the majority of households headed by illegal aliens use at least one major welfare program, meaning that shrinking the number of such households saves taxpayers money.

While he doesn’t talk about wages or welfare, Homan has been a notable exception to the exclusive focus on criminals. As he told me this summer, “the worst of the worst is about prioritization. Prioritization doesn’t mean you forget about everybody else.”

The same is true in other areas of enforcement. The IRS no doubt focuses a lot of attention on mobsters trying to launder money, but that doesn’t mean you’re exempt from filing your tax return. State troopers are going to prioritize vehicles being used to smuggle drugs, but that doesn’t mean they forgo routine traffic enforcement.

When people say most illegal aliens aren’t criminals what they mean is that most are not public safety threats, like murderers, rapists, drug dealers, or drunk drivers. But virtually all adult illegal immigrants are, in fact, criminals—felons, actually—even if they’re not usually prosecuted for their crimes because civil enforcement is easier and less costly.

Crossing the border illegally (“entering without inspection”) is a misdemeanor on the first offense (still a crime, obviously) but a felony on the second and subsequent instances, as is re-entering after deportation. And then there’s identity theft, identity fraud, tax fraud, Social Security fraud, perjury (for instance, signing an I-9 form with false information, which the majority of employed illegals have done), and more. Even the requirement to register for the draft applies to everyone, including illegals, and failing to do so is a felony.

Those complaining about the arrest of “non-criminal” illegals are usually the same people supporting sanctuary policies. Ironically, those very policies hold down the share of criminal deportations.

Sanctuary policies are often described as a decision not to have local police enforce immigration law, as though ICE wants the cop on the beat to stop people and ask for their green cards.

In reality, sanctuary policies have but one purpose—to protect criminals from the consequences of their actions. When anyone is arrested and booked, his fingerprints go both to the FBI and to DHS, and if they flag in ICE’s system, the agency informs the locals to hold on to the perp for a congressionally authorized period of up to 48 hours after they’re done with him so he can be picked up and deported.

So if California, New York, Illinois, and other sanctuary jurisdictions would just inform ICE when they’re releasing a criminal—or better yet, allow ICE into their jails so arrested criminals could be deported even more expeditiously—not only would the immigrant communities where these miscreants live be safer, but the share of criminals among deportees would be higher, maybe much higher.

One area where ICE’s deportation efforts have fallen short is at the worksite. Jobs are the primary magnet that draws people to immigrate illegally. And while it’s been illegal since 1986 to employ illegal aliens, there’s never been much enforcement.

While the Trump administration’s immigration policies have in so many respects been a refreshing break from the past, in this area they are not. While there has been more job-related enforcement than under Biden, that’s not saying much.

If the White House’s concern (and the lack of worksite enforcement is a White House decision) is to avoid sensational news footage of illegals scattering during a raid by La Migra, there’s an obvious solution. The worksite is the ideal site for what I call “briefcase enforcement” instead of “body-armor enforcement.” Raids by armed ICE agents will always need to be an option, but less sensational—and perhaps more effective -- would be ICE audits of the payroll records of suspect employers, accompanied by colleagues from the Labor Department and IRS and state agencies. This won’t work as a one-off, but if suspect employers across all regions and industries knew that hiring illegals would result in, at the very least, a paperwork colonoscopy, followed by a notice to fire the illegal workers (if they hadn’t already run off), there’d be a lot more interest in complying with the law. The possibility of fines or criminal prosecution would be an even greater incentive for employers to clean up their payrolls, though current law makes that difficult.

Worksite enforcement would also be an important spur for self-deportation. If you’re an ordinary, non-violent illegal alien and all you hear about is the “worst of the worst” getting deported, you might figure it’s worth keeping your head down and taking a chance that you won’t get caught.

But systematic nationwide worksite enforcement would change that calculation. The likelihood of arrest by ICE would go up, and even more likely would be that your newly vigilant employer would be shocked, shocked to discover that you’re illegal and regretfully have to let you go.

Once jobs in the formal labor market, where most illegals are employed, dry up, the incentives to give up and go home increase significantly.

The lower-key post-Minneapolis approach to immigration enforcement is bearing fruit. But the lowest-key way of shrinking the illegal population is self-deportation. Those who’ve left on their own so far were probably the easiest to convince—people who’d planned to leave anyway and recent arrivals who hadn’t put down roots. But only through comprehensive worksite enforcement can the rate of self-deportation be sustained and even increased. The best kind of mass deportation is where ICE isn’t involved at all.