Less than two years ago, President Donald Trump ran largely on a platform of mass deportations. Tariffs, tax breaks, affordability, crime control, election integrity, and a noninterventionist foreign policy also all featured, but immigration issues dominated Trump’s 2024 campaign, with the president pledging over and over to conduct the largest mass deportation program in the nation’s history. The gravity of delivering on that promise cannot be overstated.
During his campaign, Trump highlighted the brutal murders committed by illegal aliens ushered into the nation by then-President Joe Biden’s open-border policies. Twenty-two-year-old nursing student Laken Riley “would be alive today if Joe Biden had not willfully and maliciously eviscerated the borders,” Trump pointed out in a campaign speech. Instead, Laken was accosted by Venezuelan national José Ibarra, who attempted to rape her and, failing that, beat her to death with a stone, crushing her skull. Mother-of-five Rachel Morin was walking a family-favorite trail in Maryland when Salvadoran national Victor Antonio Martinez-Hernandez dragged her into a tunnel, raped her, and beat her to death. Mexican national Brandon Ortiz Vite shot and killed his girlfriend, 25-year-old Ruby Garcia, on the side of a highway in Michigan. Venezuelan nationals Johan José Martínez-Rangel and Franklin José Peña Ramos were encountered by U.S. Border Patrol agents and paroled into the U.S. in the first half of 2024. Weeks later, the two strangled, tied up, and sexually assaulted 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray, later dumping her body in a ditch.
These crimes, and many others like them, outraged the American people, whose anger propelled President Trump back to the White House in a historic election, signaling an end to this era of lawlessness. But it will take more than a signal to restore safety, security, and sovereignty to the American people. Enacting mass deportations is not a pleasant task: it requires the mass arrest of millions of people and shipping them back to countries that many Americans would never even consider for a vacation, let alone a mission trip, in addition to resisting the emotional blackmail and propaganda of the leftist machine. But this must be done.
This article is from The American Spectator’s summer 2026 print magazine. Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive the magazine.
In March of this year, more than a year after President Trump’s return to the White House, Honduran national Samuel Antonio Maldonado-Erazo beat a 3-year-old child to death in Florida. According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform, first responders found that the 3-year-old “had extensive bruising across his body, several burn marks, several broken ribs — one of which was detached from the backbone — a broken collarbone, and a transected pancreas, which raised concerns of possible sexual abuse.”
Mexican national Conrrado Ahuexoteco Atrisco sexually assaulted a 14-year-old high school girl in Utah. Honduran nationals Franquin Inestroza-Martinez and Gerzon Jose Chirinos-Munguia shot and killed the 24-year-old mother of Chirinos-Munguia’s son in California. Honduran national Bairon Posada-Hernandez shoved 83-year-old U.S. Air Force veteran Richard Williams onto the New York City subway tracks, killing him. Mexican national Ernesto Lopez-Gomez killed a 62-year-old man in a hit-and-run in North Carolina. Illegal alien Francisco Mendez-Martin murdered his wife of one month, 20-year-old Karla Rangel, in Texas. Guatemalan national Carlos Aguilar Reynoso raped a 5-year-old girl, who required surgery to repair the damage he did to her genitals. Illegal alien Misael Lopez Gomez murdered his 3-month-old daughter, whom he regularly abused, via what the Fairfax County chief medical examiner determined to be “blunt force trauma.” All of these incidents occurred in March 2026. The Federation for American Immigration Reform has tracked over one hundred serious crimes committed by illegal aliens since President Trump’s return to office.
Venezuelan national Jose Medina-Medina also shot and killed 18-year-old Loyola University Chicago freshman Sheridan Gorman in March. The Catholic college girl was out for a walk with friends when Medina-Medina, who had no prior criminal record, shot and killed Sheridan as she tried to run from him. In April, Nigerian national Olaolukitan Adon Abel shot and killed a 31-year-old woman and a 48-year-old man in two separate incidents in Atlanta before shooting and stabbing 40-year-old Lauren Bullis, who was out walking her dog.
Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive our summer 2026 print magazine.
There is a point to going into such gory detail when recounting all of these murders, rapes, and assaults: mass immigration (in particular, illegal immigration) poses an existential threat to the life of the nation. That isn’t a novel concept, it’s the very sentiment that propelled President Trump to a second term in the White House, even after Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media spent nearly a decade slandering him as Adolf Hitler reincarnate and hunting down and prosecuting his deputies and supporters.
That fiery sentiment is still alive and well. Millions of Americans have spent years watching their daughters, sons, sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, girlfriends, boyfriends, grandchildren, classmates, roommates, coworkers, and friends be raped, stabbed to death, beheaded, set on fire, run over, and killed in countless other barbaric manners, knowing that the barbaric killers should have never been in the U.S.
Right now, the federal government has the opportunity to restore American safety, security, and sovereignty by expelling the foreign invaders who have transformed the nation into a violent, treacherous jungle, thus giving Americans back their home, the home that their ancestors founded, built, beautified, and preserved, always at the price of sweat and tears and often at the price of blood. Right now, this can be done in a humane manner. Despite the wailing and lamentations of unhinged left-wing activists, mass deportations are a kindness; they constitute returning those in the nation unlawfully to their places of origin — or even to safe third countries when their places of origin are inhospitable or dangerous. This is a sensible, feasible, and even respectful means of addressing the existential threat to the American nation and her people.
The window of opportunity, however, is rapidly closing. The kindest response would be shipping illegal aliens out of the country. The murders, rapes, sexual assaults, and horrors heaped upon the American people by mass immigration (again, especially illegal immigration) cannot continue, will not continue.
Already, mass deportations are no easy matter. Leftist activists whine and cry, and media outlets incessantly post videos and pictures of weeping abuelas and little boys in Cookie Monster hats on the verge of tears. Legal and judicial activists are working overtime to halt the deportation of murderers, rapists, human traffickers, and drug dealers. That’s tough, but it’s far easier to deal with than whatever the situation will be in five years’ or 10 years’ time, if this matter is left unaddressed. At that point, even the cry-baby leftist activists will ask for mass deportations, but it will be too late.
Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive our summer 2026 print magazine.
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