Is Mass Deportation Realistic?

Does the American government have the right to expel people who entered the country illegally?

Most people would say yes. 

Makes sense — they broke the law. 

Title 8, Section 1325 of the U.S. Code makes it a federal crime to enter or attempt to enter the U.S. without authorization.

If, say, five hundred people entered the country illegally in any given year, it’s hard to imagine there would be much controversy if the government deported them.

What if five thousand people entered the country illegally in any given year? 

What if five hundred thousand did?

Would you start to get nervous that the country was being overwhelmed by illegal immigrants? Would you say like Bill Clinton did in 1995, “...we won't tolerate immigration by people whose first act is to break the law as they enter our country. We must continue to do everything we can to strengthen our borders, enforce our laws, and remove illegal aliens...”

Or would you just say, “Well, yes, they broke the law, but whether they should be deported depends on how otherwise law-abiding they’ve been, so we need to examine each person, case-by-case”?

What if the annual number of people entering the country illegally was five million? 

Ten million? 

Twenty million? 

And what if many of these people were poor, uneducated, unable to support themselves — vast numbers who needed public assistance to survive? What if even ten percent were criminals? The worst kind of gang members. Murderers, rapists, thieves. 

Would you say, “Well, that’s just a small minority; every group has its share of bad people?” 

Do you think your opinion might change if you personally knew someone who had been robbed, assaulted, raped, or murdered by an illegal immigrant? 

What if you knew that most of the illegal immigrants paid drug cartels to smuggle them in? That these cartels, off this human trafficking alone, made $13 billion in a single year, 2021? 

And these same cartels forced women and children — boys as well as girls —  into prostitution, sold deadly drugs to our young people, and took over whole neighborhoods in our towns and cities.

What if, as the Obama Administration’s U.S. Commission on Civil Rights reported, this massive influx puts downward pressure on wages and takes jobs from American citizens, especially those in the lower middle class—in industries like meatpacking and construction? 

What if, as the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas concluded, American citizens find it harder to obtain affordable housing because demand from mass immigration increased home and rent prices, crowding them out? 

What if illegal immigration threatens our very republic? 

Remember, the census counts people, not citizens. So even though illegal immigrants can’t vote, they do have a profound impact on how many members of Congress and electoral votes each state has. We add or subtract congressional districts based on a state’s population. And a state’s population is not based on who can vote, but on who resides there—legally or not. 

So, the more illegal residents a state draws, the more power it has in Congress. Could this perhaps account for some states’ and cities' “sanctuary” policies? Or are these states and cities more compassionate than others?

 Okay, I’ve asked a lot of questions. Are they legitimate? Or, am I just expressing my “xenophobia” – an aversion to all things foreign? 

I think it’s fair to say that the majority of the American people share these concerns. You might remember that a certain president was elected twice in large part because he promised to end illegal immigration and send those unlawfully in the country back to their nations of origin. 

According to a 2025 Marquette poll, 58% of Americans support deporting those here illegally. 

So, why don’t we do it? 

Well, some say it’s impractical because there are so many millions of illegal immigrants in the country now. 

But is this really a legitimate argument? There is no serious expectation that the LAPD, or any police department, will solve all crime, but no rational person says that’s a reason to give up law enforcement. 

What about the objection that our economy has become dependent on these immigrants to do certain jobs? 

Again, this is not an argument against mass deportation. It’s an argument for a robust, enforceable guest worker program if indeed American workers aren’t available to do these jobs. 

You might say removing millions of people from the country would be prohibitively expensive. But according to 2025 figures from the Department of Homeland Security, 2.2 million illegal immigrants have accepted a $1,000 “bonus” to voluntarily self-deport. 

If we offered each illegal immigrant a $10,000 bonus to leave, it would cost far less than the estimated $18,000 to forcibly deport them, not to mention what we pay every year to subsidize their health care, housing and other living costs. 

Vigorous enforcement of employment law through mandatory E-Verify would further encourage voluntary deportation. If illegal immigrants can’t work, most won’t stay.

So, to return to our initial question — does the American government have the right to expel people who entered the country illegally?

It not only has the right. 

It has the obligation. 

I’m Shabbos Kestenbaum, host of The Brief and Theological, for Prager University.