Today, the Society for the Rule of Law published my article on “The Case Against Mass Deportation,” on its Checks and Balances substack. Here is an excerpt:
Since Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, U.S. immigration enforcement and deportation operations have become more cruel and oppressive than they have been in many decades, if not ever – with victims including both immigrants and many US citizens. The best approach to curbing these abuses is cutting back on deportations more generally.
Since Trump returned to office in January 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal officers have killed at least three U.S. citizens (two in Minnesota and one in Texas), wounded numerous others, and detained hundreds illegally, usually after mistaking them for illegal migrants. ProPublica found some 170 cases of illegal detention of citizens through October 2025. But that is almost certainly a severe underestimate.
ICE and other agencies also make extensive use of racial profiling, which leads to detention and harassment of numerous U.S. citizens who are Asian, black, or Hispanic, or look like they might be and thus potentially suspect. The enormous extent of racial and ethnic profiling by ICE is shown by the fact that immigration arrests in Los Angeles County declined by 66 percent after a federal court order barring the use of such tactics (the ruling was eventually blocked by the Supreme Court, perhaps for procedural reasons). Conservatives and others who favor color-blind government cannot make an arbitrary exception for immigration enforcement.
Conditions in ICE detention facilities are often horrific, routinely featuring overcrowding, inadequate food and denial of essential medical treatment. Since the start of the present fiscal year in October, a record 29 people have died in ICE detention, even though the fiscal year is only about half over. The brutality and violations of civil liberties have been exacerbated by the administration’s massive expansion of the number of ICE personnel (including hiring many poorly qualified people), and by its imposition of deportation quotas incentivizing arbitrary arrests with little or no proof. There have been so many illegal ICE detentions that courts have ruled against the administration in detention cases some 11,500 times, including thousands of decisions issued by Republican-appointed judges….
The abuses of the deportation system have increased significantly thanks to Trump’s policies. But the system is cruel and unjust even under more conventional presidents. Illegal detention and deportation of U.S. citizens long predates Trump. Northwestern University political scientist Jacqueline Stevens estimated that the federal government detained or deported more than 20,000 U.S. citizens from 2003 to 2010…. Racial profiling is also not unique to the Trump era….
Ultimately, it is impossible to deport any large proportion of the estimated 13.7 million undocumented immigrants in the United States without arresting and detaining many people with little or no due process….
Ultimately, the only way to end or greatly reduce that brutality is to radically scale back deportation itself. There are a variety of ways to do that…..
The rest of the piece outlines a variety of potential reforms, such as these.
