Donald Trump’s Immigration Policy 04.05.2025

"Don't read Soviet newspapers."
— Professor Preobrazhensky.

The main “horror stories” currently being spread by left-leaning mass media concern the immigration policy of the current White House Administration. I read the news feed daily and, if we believe the media, ICE agents are grabbing everyone in sight and immediately sending them off to El Salvador. In reality, everything looks quite different.

I live in Florida—a state where rather strict measures against illegal immigration have been in effect for the past two years. Nevertheless, the state is still home to 900,000 undocumented migrants, which is 4% of the state's population. There are a total of 11 million undocumented individuals in the U.S. Remember these numbers—they'll come in handy.

Let’s first clarify who illegal immigrants are. In official U.S. government documents, this category is usually referred to as “unauthorized immigrant” or “undocumented immigrant.” These are individuals who are on U.S. territory without valid legal grounds, meaning:

  1. Entered the country without permission (crossed the border outside official entry points).

  2. Overstayed their visa (e.g., tourist, student, etc.).

  3. Violated the terms of their stay (e.g., worked without authorization).

  4. Were denied asylum or had a visa expire, but remained in the country.

40% of all undocumented immigrants are Mexicans. Next come citizens of El Salvador (6%), Guatemala (6%), Honduras (5%), India (4%), and China (3%). As we can see, citizens of Eastern European countries don’t even make it into the main statistics.

At the same time, the fight against illegal immigration in the U.S. has always existed. For example, read about deportations during the presidency of the “much-beloved” Democrat Barack Obama:
"The U.S. deported more than 3 million people during Obama’s presidency. Most had no chance to defend their rights in court."

So what has Donald Trump done? Here are two legislative initiatives:

  1. Laken Riley Act: Passed in January 2025, this law mandates the detention of illegal immigrants accused of theft, assaults on police officers, or crimes resulting in serious bodily injury. The law also grants states the right to sue the federal government for failure to enforce immigration laws.

  2. Executive Order 14159: Signed on inauguration day, this order expands the authority for expedited removal of immigrants without a court hearing, introduces criminal and civil penalties for failure to comply with registration requirements, and restricts access to public benefits for illegal immigrants.

In addition, the CBP One program was canceled, and border control at the U.S.-Mexico line was significantly strengthened. This helped reduce the influx of illegal immigrants into the country. For example, in February 2024, there were 137,473 apprehensions at the border, while in February 2025 there were only 8,347. And the trend continues. In March 2025, the U.S. recorded the lowest number of border apprehensions in the past 25 years, averaging about 264 per day (a total of 7,181 apprehensions).

And here is the deportation data from the U.S. In 2024, under Democrat Joe Biden, more than 271,000 people were deported. Under Trump, as of early May 2025, only around 139,000 deportations have occurred. So, there is no explosive increase in deportations, despite the claims from both sides. Let me repeat: in Florida alone, 900,000 undocumented immigrants reside.

And here’s another example of the “effectiveness” of the fight against illegal immigration during an operation I personally witnessed. At the end of April 2025, a large-scale immigration enforcement operation called “Operation Tidal Wave” was conducted in Florida. It lasted 4 days, and in our city, the entire sheriff’s department was “on edge.” I didn’t even understand what was happening until I read about the operation in the news. Sheriffs were stopping people left and right—something very uncommon here—rushing around with sirens, etc. In the end, across all of Florida, only 1,120 individuals residing in the country illegally were arrested over the 4 days, including 378 people with final removal orders issued by immigration courts. That’s out of 900,000 illegals.

At the same time, it remains unclear how this policy impacts cartel operations—the very reason these measures were supposedly introduced. Frankly, I’m afraid it doesn’t affect them at all.

So, as of today, Trump’s immigration policy is “a lot of media noise about nothing.” The only clear advantage is that it has blocked the flow of illegal immigrants across the Mexican border. As for deportation numbers, they haven’t changed much compared to the Democrats. There are occasional large-scale operations, but their results are quite questionable. As for fighting the infrastructure of the drug cartels, I personally have not heard of any successes in this direction within the U.S. In California, methamphetamine still costs $5 per gram, just like before. And prices for Chinese fentanyl in 2025 have even dropped from $60 to $30 per gram. China has declared a real “narcotic war” on the U.S., but both the Biden and Trump administrations are losing it.

— Dmitrii Ershov, Political Scientist

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