There are two ways to get illegal immigrants out of the United States: ICE deportations and self-deportations. Elsewhere I have described these two approaches as “body-armor” vs. “briefcase” enforcement.
In the first, agents take deportable aliens into custody and send them home. In the second, a variety of policies are implemented that make it untenable for illegal aliens to remain here, causing them to go home on their own — what more than two decades ago I outlined as “attrition through enforcement”.
While the first method is essential, and must be stepped up, DHS under disgraced former Secretary Kristi Noem mishandled it, causing the president political harm and setting back the cause of immigration control. Democrats are still using the fiasco in Minneapolis as an excuse for their push to abolish immigration enforcement altogether through complete defunding of both ICE and the Border Patrol, forcing Republicans to try to pass another reconciliation bill to fund those agencies through the rest of President Trump’s term.
But the Left doesn’t want attrition of the illegal population via “briefcase enforcement” either. Its official organ, the New York Times, ran a front-page story this week with the hard-copy headline: “Trump Cuts Off Life Necessities For Immigrants” and the web headline “Trump Squeezes Immigrants by Cutting Them Off From Jobs, Health Care and Housing”.
The six (!) Times reporters given bylines breathlessly reported that:
. . .