Photo illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Photos: Via Getty Images
President Trump undoubtedly stands on strong political ground, backed by most Americans, in cases where he's deporting convicted criminals.
- Now comes a new test, literally 40 years in the making: How comfortable are Americans with deporting millions of immigrants who paid taxes, built families and committed no crimes after coming here illegally?
Why it matters: That's the heart of the standoff in LA, as well as the broader Trump effort to expel potentially millions of immigrants who broke the law to get here and then played by U.S. rules.
- "I said it from Day 1: If you're in the country illegally, you're not off the table," Tom Homan, Trump's border czar, told the N.Y. Times. "So, we're opening that aperture up."
The backstory: Congress, going back to 1986, has sought and failed to find a pathway to citizenship for those who fit the precise description above. Many current GOP senators were among those seeking said solution.
- But concerns about border security and rewarding illegal behavior killed every effort. Now, Trump, Republicans, some Democrats and much of the U.S. public are supportive of mass deportation instead.
An estimated 14 million unauthorized immigrants live here — many of them working and paying taxes. They often fill jobs other Americans won't do — hotels, construction sites, landscaping and child care. Expelling them would sink some businesses, slow services in many communities, and hit close to home for lots of U.S. citizens.
- Will public enthusiasm wane when this reality becomes clear?
Trump and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller are pushing to hit a target of 3,000 immigration arrests a day, as first reported by Axios' Brittany Gibson and Stef Kight.
- That's triple the number of daily arrests that agents were making in the early days of Trump's term, Axios found.
The only way to pull that off is by casting wider nets beyond convicted criminals to larger worksites. So raids could rise sharply at factories, restaurants and Home Depots, where people living here illegally often gather to seek day labor on job sites.
- "Wait till you find out how many trillions we have to spend on illegal aliens," Miller wrote Tuesday in reply to a tweet by California Gov. Gavin Newsom about a Pentagon estimate that the National Guard deployment in LA will cost $134 million and last 60 days.
The big picture: Accelerated deportations are a top personal priority for Trump, who relishes visibility for the raids. Amid the unrest in LA on Monday, Miller posted on X: "You can have all the other plans and budgets you want. If you don't fix migration, then nothing else can be fixed — or saved."
- White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told us: "If you are present in the United States illegally, you will be deported. This is the promise President Trump made to the American people and the Administration is committed to keeping it."
A CBS News/YouGov poll taken last week showed 54% approval of the Trump administration's program to deport immigrants illegally in the U.S.
- White House communications director Steven Cheung tweeted that finding and added: "And the approval number will be even higher after the national guard was sent to LA to beat back the violence this weekend."
- And MAGA media is egging the president on. Charlie Kirk, one of the most influential pro-Trump podcasters, tweeted Tuesday: "President Trump is getting more popular. Deportations are popular. We need more. ... America is demanding mass deportations."
Asked for comment for this column, the Department of Homeland Security pointed us to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection's "CBP Home" app, which lets aliens notify the government of their intent to leave the country. "Tap 'Departing Traveler' to begin," the instructions say.
- "We are offering those in this country $1,000 and a free flight to leave the country and preserve the potential to return the right, legal way," DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin told us.
- Under current law, those taking that option will be barred from coming back for either three or 10 years, or permanently, depending on how long they've been in the U.S. illegally.
How it works: It's important to understand how people pay taxes even though they're here illegally:
- In 1996, the U.S. government created an alternative to the Social Security number for undocumented immigrants — the individual taxpayer identification number (ITIN). This allows people to pay taxes while being here illegally and awaiting a path to citizenship.
- Those people have been paying taxes, believing it would enhance their chances of getting citizenship. A portion of those taxes helps fund Social Security. Under that law, if they eventually get citizenship, those taxes will count toward their retirement.
- The amounts are substantial. Undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion in federal, state and local taxes in 2022, according to a tally by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. More than a third of what they pay funds programs they can't even access.
Now, those ITIN numbers could be used to track people down. Deportation fears triggered a decline in tax filings this year in some immigrant communities in the D.C. suburbs, the Washington Post found.
- That sets the stage for a humanitarian showdown unlike any witnessed in U.S. history: Trump is willing to use the U.S. military inside America to protect U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents during roundups.
The bottom line: There's no clear mechanism to differentiate between someone who came here recently alone versus a father of three, whose wife and children are living here legally, and have been here paying taxes and committing no crimes for a decade. In the eyes of the current law, illegal is illegal.
- When TV explodes with images of burning cars and lawlessness, Trump wins. But what about families torn apart or longtime neighbors yanked from their homes and taken away in handcuffs? That's when America's rawest views of immigration will be revealed.
Go deeper: "Republicans warn Trump that some deportations go too far," by Hans Nichols and Andrew Solender.