In 2026, ICE tripled the number of arrests of illegal immigrants. Sounds like a winning campaign, no? Actually, it’s absurd. Do the math. ICE reports 1,264 arrests per day in 2025. Multiply 1,264 times 365 days per year. That comes to 461,360 arrests in 2025. Even assuming that ICE works 365 days a year, and even assuming that each one of these arrests is of a proven illegal immigrant, that means: It will take 22 years before every illegal immigrant is arrested.
It is said that 11 million immigrants are in the country illegally. Simple math. Round up the 461,360 arrests to 500,000 arrests. Divide 11 million by 22 sets of 500,000 arrests and you get 22 years.
If ICE doesn’t actually work 365 days a year, then the 22-year timeline just gets longer.
Not to mention all the assumptions built in to the 22-year calculation: no one is arrested erroneously, all arrestees are deported and not a single additional illegal immigrant enters the US henceforth.
This is the exact opposite of a successful campaign to remove all illegal immigrants from this country. A 22-year plan is no solution!
President Trump’s strategy isn’t working.
It’s also cruel. Agents are masked. Families are split. Mistakes are made. Some people are killed. And who accepts responsibility?
It is also cruel to the ICE agents themselves. According to a long report in USA Today, there aren’t enough agents to meet Trump’s arrest goals, so standards are lowered. New agents are insufficiently vetted, trained and educated. Resignations from ICE are at a record high.
That’s one side of the issue, and the contradictory sides pile up. Here’s one: Trump’s strategy acknowledges the problem. ICE’s excesses notwithstanding, there is a problem.
It starts with this: a frequently heard claim of an illegal immigrant that he or she is law abiding and has been ever since he or she entered the country. This is a contradiction in terms. It is a crime to enter the country illegally. This, many illegal immigrants do not acknowledge. This, many critics of Trump’s strategy overlook. This, alas, is part of a larger political deterioration in which accountability and honesty are set aside.
Still a different side to this issue: Legal immigrants to this country often have to go through an onerous process to become American citizens. Why should their honesty and commitment be overlooked in favor of people who enter the country illegally and want to enjoy its benefits?
Still another side to the issue:
Countless illegal immigrants make wonderful contributions to America. To send them back to where they came from is counterproductive. Farms and countless industries are powered in no small part by illegal immigrants. The government’s solution of seasonal permission for non-citizens to work the fields is insufficient, inefficient and subject to its own abuses.
Plus, some illegal immigrants were brought here as children; to uproot them is cruel and in any event there really is no home to send them back to.
Still more: Some illegal immigrants are violent criminals. Their removal from the US may be the only facet of this complex issue that almost everyone can agree on.
Which is another way of saying that it is impossible for partisans on all the other sides of the larger illegal immigrant issue to agree on any overall solution. Yet, a solution must be found. Trump’s strategy is a 22-year program of disruption. It’s not workable, not to mention, it undermines the ethos of this country as a welcoming place. Yet, doing nothing is also not workable, as it undermines the process of legal immigration to this country, and it sustains the social fissures.
Which means — here is the excruciating bottom line — no solution is available without the compromise of a sacred, honored principle. Trump’s strategy compromises the ethos of the US. Doing nothing compromises the principle of law. Never the twain shall these two meet.
I’ve thought long and hard about which sacred, honored principle of mine I am prepared to sacrifice in order to fix this complex moral conundrum and political antinomy.
I am prepared to compromise the principle of law, with certain qualifications. I favor this solution to the conundrum because the minimum-22-year program of mass deportation is impractical. It is also ugly and, as I say, it shames the ethos the America. Let the illegal immigrants be — with these four qualifications:
1. Violent illegal immigrants should be tried or deported.
2. No voting rights for non-citizens.
3. No government benefits for illegal immigrants who do not work, except in cases of genuine hardship, and a work requirement of 20 hours a month is not a genuine hardship.
4. No change in the process of becoming a legal immigrant.
Bottom line: I favor a one-time amnesty. That’s it. And that’s a contradiction — it’s the contradiction I’m willing to bear. Others, with different solutions, will have to bear their own contradictions, since there is no solution that that does not entail a compromise of an honored principle.
For example, it is a contradiction to support Trump’s ICE policy and also affirm the ethic in Emma Lazarus’ words on the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your your . . . huddled masses, yearning to breathe free . . .” Note the word, masses.
What Trump’s program with ICE has shown me is that perfection is sometimes bad policy. In a perfect world, illegal is illegal. In the real world, cruelty results from adherence to perfection, at least on immigration.
One more thing: Probably most can agree that the massive presence of illegal immigrants in this country is problem not of our making, but results from inaction many decades ago. We bear the burden of the sins of predecessors.
Doesn’t matter. The problem is now in our laps. We have to deal with it. The way I deal with it: Let the illegal immigrants be, with the four qualifications enumerated above.
