Trump Should Stay the Course On Deportations
Americans should dispel the myth that we need illegals to work in any industry.
There are two recent polls that, together, serve as a sort of addendum to AACON’s most recent blog, “Why Should We? African Americans should not be brow-beaten into joining the anti-ICE protests.”
One poll was featured on a recent video by Rassmussen Reports pollster Mark Mitchell. According to his findings, President Trump now has an amazing total approval rating among African American respondents of 54 percent.
This is remarkable. According to some exit polls, Trump won roughly 18 percent of the Black vote in the 2024 presidential election, making him the most popular GOP presidential candidate since Eisenhower’s 1956 election. A 54 percent approval rating would mean that Trump’s favorability has more than doubled since Election Day.
There is another clip that features CNN pollster Harry Enten that dispels the media reporting, not to mention all the mocking “FAFO” TikTok videos, that claim that the legals who supported Trump now regret doing so now that the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is deporting illegals.
The proverbial legal who voted for Trump and is now shocked — shocked, I tell you! —was always more myth than reality. If Trump was clear on anything as a candidate, it was that he was going to deport illegals. Nonetheless, this CNN poll underscores just how divorced this narrative is from reality:
“More so than any other group that I could find, the group of voters who became more hawkish on immigration were in fact immigrants themselves, immigrants who were registered to vote in this country. Closest to a ‘trust more on immigration,’ you go back to 2020, Democrats, get this, held a 32-point lead on this issue. Immigrant voters were in the Democratic camp. Jump forward to 2024, 2025. Look at that shift. A 40-point shift to the right among immigrant voters. Republicans now lead on this issue by eight points over Democrats.”
Perhaps to dissuade those who think that this shift is due to millions of legal immigrants suddenly falling in love with those pretty red MAGA caps, Enten explains the shift in clear terms:
“The net favorable rating [of] immigrants who are here illegally, ‘Among Immigrant Citizens,’ again, those registered to vote, in 2020, look at this, plus 23 points on the net favorable rating. But look at where we were in 2024 - minus six points underwater. So immigrant citizens have become increasingly unfavorable in their views of those immigrants who are here illegally.”
In other words, according to Enten, legals, angered by the tsunami of illegals who caravanned into this country and their neighborhoods during the Biden administration, have embraced the Trump deportation efforts.
Much of this anger towards illegal immigration from the legal immigrant community is financial. Much like African Americans , legal immigrants are “disproportionately likely to be in low-wage jobs” therefore vulnerable to the wage-depressing effect of illegal immigration.
As the Federation for American Immigration Reform states:
“[The] wage depressing effect of illegal immigrant workers was documented in 2008 by researchers working for the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, who found that ‘average wages among documented [legal] workers are lower in industries that employ undocumented [illegal] workers and that a greater share of undocumented workers in those industries further lowers wages.’ Immigrants introduce downward wage pressure in low-skilled occupations almost everywhere they are found…”
Besides wage depression and service cuts, African American and legal immigrant communities, both disproportionately reliant upon social services, are seeing their social services threatened by illegals.
New York Mayor Eric Adams became a much more controversial figure recently by daring to speak on what sanctuary city mayors rarely speak on, namely, the cost inflicted upon cities by illegal immigration.
In 2023, Adams put it bluntly. Pointing to the estimated $12 billion the migrant crisis would cost his city over the next three years, he said, “Let me tell you something New Yorkers, never in my life have I had a problem that I did not see an ending to — I don’t see an ending to this . . . This issue will destroy New York City.”
Other sanctuary cities are in a similar predicament. Illegals have to be fed, sheltered, provided with free medical care and education. The cost of all this is met by the taxpayer and by cuts in social services, again hurting the Black and legal immigrant communities the most.
As Illinois Policy reports:
“[Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson’s] migrant policies come at a direct cost to the Black community. His administration has committed over $600 million to migrant services while the state has spent over $800 million on migrant housing and other supports and nearly $1.5 billion more on migrant health care. Wirepoints estimates CPS alone has spent anywhere between $215 million and $410 million on migrant students. Even original Chicago Teachers Union contract demands included an extra $2,000 per migrant child.
“Compare that to his support for Black Chicagoans: his “treatment not trauma” mental health initiative funded just four clinics. His reestablished Department of Environment consists of six new staffers added to an existing four. His reentry program for formerly incarcerated residents? Just a tiny office. His youth employment initiative? Only 4,000 temporary, minimum-wage summer jobs.”
There is also resentment towards those who ‘jumped the line’ even among legal immigrant groups that are not financially affected by illegal immigration, as expressed by Lindy Li.
However, the most damaging way illegal immigration hurts legal immigrants is with crime. Much like how Black communities are plagued by crime from Black criminals, illegals are a cancer within the larger migrant community.
This is not surprising. Biden’s open border policy allowed millions of unvetted individuals into the U.S. Some of these are from the same gangs that legal immigrants came to America to escape. These gangs — Tren de Aragula (TDA) and MS-13 are the most notorious ones, résumés that include human trafficking, rape, extortion, and drug smuggling.
Question: When these gang members, from places like Venezuela and El Salvador come to the US, do they settle in neighborhoods that are primarily occupied by Spanish-speaking legal immigrants, or do they prefer to live in the dormitories, townhouses, and expensive apartment buildings of the typical “No Kings” protestor?
These reactions from the African American and legal immigrant communities to the Trump deportations contrast sharply from the reactions expressed by civil rights organizations:
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) has declined to invite President Trump to its next convention due in part because he, according to the NAACP, “has illegally turned the military on our communities.”
The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) have called the deportations a “deeply disturbing escalation in federal tactics and shocking violation of democratic norms.”
And the Asian Americans Advancing Justice have called ICE raids “increasingly aggressive and overboard in its immigration enforcement efforts, creating chaos and panic in communities.”
Yet the most visible proponents of illegal immigration, as well as the most vocal opponents of ICE, tend not to be these organizations who, on the issue of immigration, advocate against the best interest of the communities they purport to represent. Instead, we see a group that is primarily caucasian, progressive, high income, almost completely unaffected by illegal immigration in any substantial way, and, despite their frequent characterization of people who oppose open borders as “xenophobic” and “racist,” seem to lack sincere regard for the welfare of illegal immigrants.
Representative Becca Balint, a white Vermont Democrat, expressed the thought of many of her peers when she told a town hall audience why she supports immigration “If we don't have avenues for people to come here legally, to work or to build a home here . . . we're not going to have anybody around to wipe our asses.”
Yet, Trump is the bad guy?
Trump recently flirted with the idea of giving illegals who work on farms, in the hotel industry, or at eateries, a pass on deportation. This would have been a mistake.
Americans should dispel the myth that we need illegals to work in any industry, including the farming, hotel, and restaurant industries. There are no jobs that Americans won’t or can’t do, especially at a time when there are over 7 million Americans who are unemployed.
The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) looked into 472 civilian occupations and found only six (1.27 percent) that were “majority immigrant.”
Even if it were true that there are jobs that only immigrants could do, it would not follow that those immigrants have to be illegal immigrants.
Trump should stay on course in deporting illegals or encouraging illegals to self-deport. America will be better without them. There will be more jobs, less wage-depression, and less overburdened social services. The best of these immigrants will return anyway. Next time they’ll do it legally.
— DK