We Need To Deport 1 Million Illegal Immigrants A Month

The Trump administration has done an admirable job of stopping border crossings by illegals since taking control of the executive branch in January, but as many Americans who voted for President Donald Trump know, stopping those people is only half the battle.

The other half is efficient and effective mass deportations to the tune of 1 million per month.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced in late October that more than 2 million illegals had left the country, most of whom self-deported, while DHS forcibly removed 500,000. DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said the Trump administration was on pace to deport 600,000 by the end of Trump’s first year back in office.

Nearly three-quarters of those arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) were “charged with or convicted of a crime in the U.S.” Illegal aliens who have committed other crimes on top of being in the country illegally have been the primary focus for deportations thus far.

Those numbers are historic, as the Trump administration says. They are a good start, but the unfortunate reality is that they really only scratch the surface of the real problem. There are untold millions of illegals inside our borders.

ICE has been dramatically understaffed (probably on purpose) for years, and border czar Tom Homan has said 10,000 more DHS agents are set to come online, enabling deportations to ramp up. But the current pace cannot persist for too much longer.

People have been throwing around a range of 10-20 million for over a decade, but the fact is that the federal government has no clue how many illegals are in the country.

Those estimates often do not account for the people erroneously given legal status on refugee claims (to the tune of tens of thousands per year since the earliest available records in the 1990s), those under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), persons who obtained legal status through having anchor babies on U.S. soil under an incorrect interpretation of “birthright citizenship,” those who overstayed their visas, and much more.

In addition, those estimates are almost certainly low. A 2008 report from DHS showed the estimated number of illegal aliens was 11.6 million, noting it was a decrease from the year prior, which was at 11.8 million. It also noted that the population of illegal aliens increased 37 percent from 2000 to 2008.

The Biden administration tried to claim that the number of illegal immigrants in the country has actually decreased from 2008, to 11 million in 2022.

That seems impossible.

Consider that Biden DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas admitted that about 85 percent of border encounters resulted in an illegal alien being released into the United States. In 2023, there were 3,201,144 encounters, meaning about 2,720,972 would have been released into the country.

With Border Patrol facing a monthly onslaught of hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, and an average of more than 80 percent being released into the country, Democrats were on track to admit an additional 10 million into the United States if Joe Biden or Kamala Harris won in 2024.

The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) placed the estimate at 15.4 million illegal immigrants in the United States as of January 2025, estimating that 11.5 to 12.5 million legal and illegal immigrants entered the country over the course of the Biden administration.

The Biden administration took great pains to give illegal aliens “parole” status with the apparent intent of giving them a kind of legal status to be in the country and not be considered for deportation. Unsurprisingly, the Biden administration never tracked down many of the illegals it paroled, allowing them to stay in the country, no questions asked.

Numbers are all over the place, and there is no clear picture of the true number of illegals (or those incorrectly given legal status) in the United States, but it is almost certainly much worse than we think it is. Whether it is closer to 15 million or 40 million, the attitude of deportation enforcement should always be that it’s 40 million. In other words, they cannot move quickly or forcefully enough. It is therefore necessary for the Trump administration to set the sights of deportation high and spare no expense or effort in doing so.

With just under 40 months left in Trump’s term, the administration should aim to deport 1 million immigrants per month — that includes legal and illegal immigrants.

That kind of mass deportation program would demonstrate a level of seriousness to the American people, a level of seriousness unmatched by rhetoric or edgy memes and funny video edits of deportation enforcement — though those are welcome too.

As the new class of 10,000 DHS agents comes online in the months ahead, the emphasis should shift from primarily focusing on illegals who have committed other crimes to all who entered the country illegally, which is what the Americans who supported Trump in 2024 voted for.

As The Federalist has reported, they voted for real, mass deportations, no matter who the person is or what else he may have done while here; for removing legal status of those who do not deserve it; for challenging the notion of “birthright citizenship” (which is a major undertaking the Trump administration has targeted); and for finding ways to denaturalize and deport persons who obtained citizenship but are no longer deserving of it.

Vast numbers of them also voted for a temporary halt (at the very least) to all legal immigration, a significant decrease in visas given to foreigners for any reason, and the restoration of the idea that America is for Americans. Americans desperately need a cultural revival, and that will mean removing people who refuse to assimilate or whose culture is incompatible with our own.

Any honest observer who lives in a densely populated area, like the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, will notice that when he goes to the grocery store, he is hard-pressed to find anyone speaking English. Not just the employees of the store, but the customers as well. If he takes a drive in the surrounding area, there are untold numbers of people who are clearly foreigners.

Is this experience merely anecdotal, or have these places really been so overrun with immigrants that it is hard to find someone who was actually born in this country, or whose primary language is English?

Instead of a 50-year mortgage, the administration’s goal should be to deport enough people to lower demand and make housing more affordable to actual Americans, whose birthright includes being able to own a home and raise a family.

Americans want zero illegal immigration, little or no legal immigration, and a mass deportation system that makes noticeable cultural changes to American cities and towns, returning them to their rightful stewards.

As The Federalist reported, deporting illegal immigrants is not enough.

Breccan F. Thies is the White House correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.