Why Mass Migration Is So Difficult to Stop

Donald Trump has taken steps that have virtually ended illegal border crossings. Few Democrats thought he was capable of doing it.

Illegal crossings at the southern border have dropped by more than 90%, while legal immigration has slowed considerably. Fewer visas are being issued, and processing immigration requests has slowed to a crawl.  "US Citizenship and Immigration Services completed 74% fewer naturalizations in July 2026 than at the same point a year earlier," reports UnHerd's Alexcia Nieves.

Trump accomplished this because he didn't need a congressional mandate or permission from any courts to carry out his responsibility to protect the nation. He used his executive authority to cut through the red tape and BS to secure the border.

It's the rest of the job that's proving to be difficult.

It's Trump's internal deportation efforts that have become controversial. Out of an estimated 14 million people living in the United States illegally, only a tiny fraction has been deported. More than 120,000 people were deported in 2025, up 150% from the 47,000 deported in 2024. It is unknown how many of those deported re-entered the U.S. illegally.

A large percentage of Democrats and independents supported Trump's border security efforts. But Trump's internal deportation has engendered fierce opposition from Democrats and many independents, leading to a backlash.

"The administration’s aggressive interior enforcement tactics in particular have triggered intense media scrutiny and street-level backlash, contributing to public concerns over how arrests and deportations are being carried out," Nieves writes. The open borders crowd has ginned up outrage, working overtime to highlight ICE reactions to aggressive activism by protesters.

A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found that around 60% of Americans disapproved of Trump’s handling of immigration. Yet disapproval of Trump’s enforcement tactics doesn’t appear to translate into broader opposition to his effort to curb immigration. The same annual Gallup survey that tracks Americans’ immigration preferences found earlier this year that a whopping two-thirds of Americans favor either maintaining today’s much lower levels of immigration or reducing it further. Americans may be uncomfortable with some of Trump’s hard-line tactics, but they appear to quietly favor the result.

"By the standards of Western politics, Trump’s achievement — partially translating voters’ long-standing demand for lower immigration levels into actually lower inflows — is something close to a miracle," Nieves writes.

Europeans are no different. They've been demanding lower immigration for years and the deportation of those in their countries illegally. Instead, more and more illegal immigrants flood European cities, changing the national character of the nations they are fleeing to. The newcomers deplete workers' bargaining power, strain social services, and affect the social cohesion of countries that have been largely demographically unchanged for centuries.

When Great Britain exited the European Union (EU) in 2016, it was the shot heard around the world. British citizens believed they had regained control of their immigration policy and could staunch the flow of foreigners pouring into their country.

Nieves writes, "The annual number of people immigrating to Britain surged to 1.3 million in 2023, up from 589,000 in 2016."

Trump's success in regaining control of the border and partial success in lowering immigration to the U.S. is an anomaly. No other Western nation has been able to do it.

Why?

The reason is straightforward. Immigration at sufficient scale doesn’t merely add people to a country. Over time, institutions and industries adapt themselves to their presence. Businesses — especially in sectors like hospitality, food, construction, and personal services — become dependent on migrants’ cheap labor. In parallel with this, government agencies and nonprofit contractors build programs around migrants, which these days generally means poorer populations from the Global South.

There are powerful interests that, wittingly or not, become dependent on legal and illegal immigration. "Those dependencies eventually create political pressure of their own, as employers, service providers, and local governments push national elected officials to protect the economic arrangements that have developed around migration," Nieves observes.

For Trump's Republican allies, the opposition to his efforts to restrict immigration is not based on protecting immigrants themselves but rather on protecting the industries they congregate in.  

Trump’s first two years have demonstrated that it is possible to end the age of mass migration. They also show the extraordinary political effort required to do it — and the multidirectional resistance. His most difficult battles have not always been with the liberal opposition, but with businesses, government programs, and other institutions that spent years adapting themselves to high immigration and now have an interest in its continuation.

It's like trying to eliminate an entitlement program. So many political and economic interests feed off the program that ending it would carry enormous political and economic costs. 

Related: France May Be Forced to Call Out the Army to Deal With 'Barbarians'

In trying to end mass migration, resistance is ultimately futile.

Editor's Note: President Trump is leading America into the "Golden Age" as Democrats desperately try to stop it.  

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