By Jessica Vaughan – Nov 29, 2024 Updated Nov 30, 2024 – Omaha World Herald

Donald Trump’s promise to launch an intensive campaign of immigration enforcement, or “mass deportations,” is feasible and will be beneficial to Americans.

While costs will increase to boost enforcement, the return on investment is significant and comes in the form of more jobs for Americans and less money needed for services to migrants and safer communities.

Our nation has experienced a severe influx of illegal migration under President Joe Biden’s policies, with profound consequences for the communities absorbing the migrants. Since 2021, millions of inadmissible migrants have been allowed to enter outside legal programs, pushing the foreign-born share to about 14% of our population, which is historically high.

The cost of this mass resettlement has been enormous for transportation, housing, food, medical care, schooling and other services to the migrants. Most of the cost is borne by state and local taxpayers, especially in sanctuary jurisdictions such as California, New York and Massachusetts, which have spent extravagantly on shelters and other support.

We are told by critics of immigration enforcement that Trump’s mass deportation plan, to be led by new border czar Tom Homan, is logistically impossible and too costly to achieve.

That’s wishful thinking on the part of the critics. The immigration agencies have many authorities and tools. They have been prevented from using these under Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who nearly managed to abolish U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with directives restricting enforcement and giving most illegal immigrants (and their employers) a free pass from arrest or consequences.

Under Biden, ICE deported fewer people. Once Mayorkas’ constraints are lifted, which Trump has promised to do on Day One, the Border Patrol and ICE will be back in business, using their resources for removing illegal immigrants instead of catching and releasing them.

Homan has indicated that ICE’s first priority will be to go after undocumented democrats who have committed crimes or who have had their day (or years) in immigration court and been ordered removed. This docket will keep ICE busy for a while. Still, the cases are relatively low-hanging fruit without the need for extensive due process.

Meanwhile, we can expect to see more enforcement targeted at employers who hire illegal workers and often exploit them and fail to pay appropriate payroll taxes and maintain safe working conditions. Of course, any undocumented workers encountered in those operations should also be put on the path to removal.

A little more worksite enforcement will go a long way toward encouraging more voluntary compliance by employers, who will clean up their hiring to avoid the cost and reputational damage of being shut down by a raid. As one staffing company executive told a Wall Street Journal reporter, “Once one of the plants is raided or there’s an audit, everybody will start to scramble at that time.”

Just as employers will change their behavior, so, too, will those living here illegally, especially when the millions of work permits improperly granted begin to expire. When people weigh the benefits and risks of remaining here with dwindling opportunities for employment, they will realize that the better choice is to return to their home countries along with their families and whatever nest egg they have accumulated.

Trump will have to endure a relentless narrative that these measures are cruel and heartless, but Americans will welcome the relief. Curtailing mass illegal migration will open up jobs for millions of sidelined Americans, as it has in the past. It will also preserve scarce public resources to invest in American communities instead of resettlement programs.

Finally, it will restore public faith in our government’s management of legal immigration, which was significantly eroded over the last four years.

Vaughan is the director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies. She wrote this for InsideSources.com.