The enemy must be crushed remorselessly. If the invasion of undocumented aliens from incompatible cultures is not reversed, it’s game over. You loose your country, its traditions, it’s future.Gird up your loins.
You cannot "temporarily suspend" ICE operations for a "cooling off" period for several reasons. The main reason is that there is no need to in the vast majority of the country. In Red States, where state and local law enforcement cooperate with ICE operations and where jails and courts turn over illegals in their custody to ICE without any manufactured drama, you don't have these problems. Even in the Blue Hives, like Chicago and even Portland(!) where local law enforcement is at least now cooperating in keeping the protestors from directly interfering with ICE operations even if they're prohibited from participating in them themselves, you don't have this problem.
The only problem we've got is Minnesota, where state and local officials have taken a maximalist position against doing the bare minimum to deploy state and local law enforcement under their control to maintain public order. They're the outlier, even among Blue Hives. If they would do the minimum of deploying their forces to create a boundary between ICE and the protestors to let ICE work without interference, both Good and Pretti would probably still be alive.
The revelations uncovered by independent journalists into the wide- scale fraud by Somalis and the exposure of the Signal groups that included government officials coordinating with the protestors to disrupt lawful Federal operations have me convinced that Minnesota may be a bigger, more important hub for Democratic money laundering and other shenanigans nationwide than we may have appreciated. They appear to be ready to engage in an existential struggle there to protect their interests that they aren't as worried about in the other Blue Hives.
So backing off the pressure isn't the right choice. Changing the points to which pressure is applied might be a good tactical decision, but pressure can't be relieved by a total ICE stand down in Minnesota and certainly not nationwide when there aren't any of these same problems anywhere else.
The idea of what should have been done seems correct to me. But it’s too late now. Backing down will only strengthen leftist anti-deportation agitation. Seems to me, a victory has to be gained, people obstructing ICE need to be arrested and then things will need to be quiet for a while
Here are Max's 6 points of actions Trump should have done.
1) all illegals have 1 year to leave US, 2) businesses have 1 year to dismiss illegals, 3) close border, 4) ID legal pitfalls and mitigate, 5) hire 000s of ICE agents, 6) negotiate w/state and local govs.
#1, #3 and #5 have already been accomplished. #6 is effectively what's happening now, and we see that LA, Chicago, Portland, and MN won't negotiate. #4 = pass a law saying that states/cities SHALL cooperate w/feds on immigration and outlaw sanctuary jurisdictions. I agree. #2 is the easiest for him to do and i'm surprised they haven't gone bigger on this and done an EO w/E-Verify.
I don't see where backing off does any good though. Until when? #4 is passed? W/o some other action, it would be a victory for the radical left and an admission that monkeywrenching works. I don't know to see that as a good thing.
My hunch on the 4D chess hypothesis is this - admin knows that birthright citizenship is before SC. With all the chaos, SC will not add to it and further limiting policy options and render the constitution a suicide pact. Public opinion may be souring on ICE tactics, but SC, especially conservatives, can see that a loss on BRC and enforcement generally would take us to a bad place. Public opinion will also come around at some point when people digest the implications of backing off. Would backing off even embolden more border crossers? Yes.
Your take is the reason why the country is in the position that it is in, and why Republicans and the right in the West more generally have been feckless for so long: you seem to think that bad PR means we should abdicate doing the right thing and upholding the law. In the American media environment anything Trump does has been and would have been treated this way, and the midterms were almost always going to look like this -- might as well actually do the right thing when you have power. Very unsure why you seem to think the "propaganda war" is winnable for the right; most left-and-center voters are completely insulated.
It would be far worse for Trump and the Right if, after discovering all this Somali fraud, they did nothing about it. I would also argue anything less than what he's doing now would be seen as doing nothing about it.
Argentina President Javier Milei: “You can’t give shit leftards a single inch… They will kill you! If you give them an inch, they will destroy you! You can't negotiate with leftists. You don't negotiate with trash because they will end you.”
Trump is very strategic in his thinking, and also quite long term actually. That doesn’t mean he’s right of course, but underestimating him is a cottage industry in this country. I think he’s targeting blue states on purpose, and for some reasons that he is not making public or obvious, as with the majority of things he does. Withdrawing the Feds from Minneapolis at this point would be the absolute worst thing to do, especially if you’re concerned about the propaganda war - it would embolden a triumphant left and further enrage and demoralize the right.
The propaganda wars is heavily rigged against anything vaguely right coded in the west.
If you back off because of bad optics or fear of whining centrists you will achieve nothing. You will merely be allowed to supervise an ever deeper exploration of collectivism.
1) Task DHS with careful matching of all I-9's. Crossmatch with IRS to verify no SSNs being used in multiple places. AI could find suspicious SSN patterns in a few minutes.
2) Give employers 60 days to correct any problems.
3) After 60 days, refocus enforcement ops to be employer based.
4) Use IEEPA to restrict wire transfers to Mexico and other targeted countries.
It would all get challenged, but only #4 is legally questionable. The rest is explicitly authorized by statute. However, he can't just stop enforcement ops because protestors are being stupid and getting themselves hurt or killed. Should Eisenhower could have Arkansas get away with segregation? These sorts of violent, sanctuary states are no different.
Part of the reason the Right is willing to say "screw it, let's go for broke now" is because the Left has outright and repeatedly said that when they have the House, Senate and WH, they will use it to make sure the Republicans never win another election, by any means necessary (in their case, that includes lawfare.)
When someone tells you they're going to try and throw you in prison because they dislike your politics, the rational response is to seek to destroy them first. Whether they admit it or not, illegals are a key component of the Left's political machine: as extra census bodies, as protest cannon-fodder, and some as illegal votes.
The problem with going all-in with the most aggressive approach imaginable is that this works only when public opinion is unequivocally on-side. The Right still acts like the 2024 election was a landslide victory, but it wasn't, not by PV or EV. They had a very narrow margin for error and first Trump does this stupid tariffs thing (which hasn't actually been as catastrophic as anticipated) which almost undid all the goodwill he managed to create for himself.
If, for example, Thailand decided to do mass deportations, I guarantee you nobody would care because the Thai people understand you don't show up uninvited. America isn't Thailand, we have lots of people who think illegals are contestants in a game show to see who can remain the longest in America without getting caught.
Trump got away with mass deportations in 2025, but I think doing it in Blue states was always risky. I think Trump in many ways wanted to trigger a confrontation to display supremacy over the Left, but I don't think he anticipated Renee Good would be stupid enough to sacrifice herself at the altar of illegal immigration. Of course, anyone who understands the enemy wasn't surprised at all over what happened. I'm honestly surprised it didn't happen sooner.
I'm also beginning to sour some on Steven Miller. If my suspicions are correct, he, along with Kristi Noem, are the ones pushing this hardline approach, which even Tom Homan, a true professional, apparently opposed. The problem with Miller is that he's an ideological thinker and ideologues are dangerous. I suspect he wants an insurrection to happen so they can crush it. But this is such a dangerous game to play.
I was actually agreeing with you that there are better ways this could be done. Which is why I think this is only loosely about immigration policy.
So far, Both the Dems and Trump think the deportation chaos is advantageous. Trump thinks it makes him look strong (and for his base, he's right.) Walz and the Dems think the bad PR is hurting Trump (and they're right.) This stops when either group questions whether it's 1) worth it in lives; 2) really politically beneficial.
If Trump were a strategic thinker -- his name would be Vance, but let's leave that aside -- he would make a primetime announcement tomorrow:
"The chaos in Minnesota is terrible. Truly terrible. Worst we've seen. And those 2 lives, protestors lives, that were lost... they shouldn't have been there. They were keeping us from removing the worst of the worst, the child rapists and murderers, and those two protestors shouldn't have been there. And bringing a gun to an ICE protest, what was that guy thinking? So effective today, I've decided that since the elected leadership of Minneapolis seems to want illegal child rapists and murderers roaming their streets and is encouraging their citizens to obstruct ICE, we'll give them what they want. ICE street operations will cease and so will all federal money to the state of Minneapolis. I don't want to do street operations. So anytime they want their federal highway money, and Medicaid money, and education money restored, they can partner with us to turn over arrested illegal aliens directly to ICE from the jails. Then there's no more need for street operations, and we can restore Minneapolis to the great city -- it truly was one of our greatest before the Leftist radicals took control -- I want to see Minneapolis restored, and we're ready to partner with the state to do it. But as long as they want to pretend federal law doesn't apply in Minnesota, we won't be sending them any money. It's really too bad."
I agree; I can hear his voice saying it! He's giving both sides what they want while also retaining his bottom line. Most important, he's putting the ball in Walz's court, which is where it belongs. I doubt the guy's really the brinksman he seems to think he is. If all federal money except for, the FAA - so the airports can function - is cut off, at some point, the pain will set in and Minnesotans will direct their outrage towards the man it should've always been directed at - Walz.
Of course, Walz could prove to be a real bad-ass and simply give no fucks and his base might love him for it. Even then, crisis averted, maybe Republicans can draft legislation to boot Minnesota from the union, since they're effectively no longer part of it, anyway.
Unfortunately, the Trump administration is staffed by Claremont and Heritage-types who think Abraham Lincoln was their guy. They won't go for it and Steven Miller absolutely won't go for it.
Perhaps Mr Dreher can send the idea up the pipeline? It sounds good on the surface but as someone on a live chat this morning wrote ‘the right treats politics like a football game, the left treat it like a holy war’. If our leaders don’t start understanding who the left is and act accordingly it will be them and us in the gulag.
As always, I respect your take on really any issue. But I profoundly disagree with your assessment of illegal immigration.
Broadly speaking, the administration’s aggressive approach is the right one for one simple reason: the only way they’ll ever achieve mass deportations is via self-deportation. And the only way to encourage self-deportations en masse is to convince illegal immigrants everywhere that Trump means business. Accept the carrot of a $3,000 check, a free repatriation flight, and a tenuous chance to re-enter the country the right way, or you’ll get the stick of aggressive law enforcement action.
Sitting back for a year to train up ICE might make sense in a perfect world, but there’s too many entities who benefit from illegal immigration to justify the delay. Too many corporations, small business owners, NGOs, and state and city governments rely on illegal immigration to grease their wheels. (I’m thinking cheap labor, public funds, and congressional representation.) If the administration only has unified government for two years (history suggests that Democrats will reclaim the House), it makes no sense to burn half your time in power training ICE agents for a mission that might never see the light of day. The status quo remains intact unless Trump does something comparatively radical, like what we’re seeing today.
That being said, I agree with you that the administration’s current approach—flooding sanctuary cities with ICE agents—suffers from diminishing returns. Perhaps they could assign new recruits to friendlier jurisdictions? Working in a place like Minneapolis must be exhausting and demoralizing—they’re engaged as much in crowd control as they are in executing warrants! And whenever ICE overreacts to the activists (many of whom purposefully blur the lines between legitimate protest and direct action), the only clips that gain traction are the ones that make ICE look awful.
Perhaps you’re right that law enforcement needs to take a backseat to other means re: tackling illegal immigration. ICE has gotten too loud and unnerving for the average citizen. The administration needs subtler methods to achieve its aims: make an example out of employers who hire illegal labor; deny funds to sanctuary cities; incentivize state governments to let ICE into the prisons, to get the worst of the worst out of the country.
ICE’s presence in Minneapolis strikes me as a political vendetta more than anything, even though the local government frankly brought it on themselves. (I utterly despise Walz and how he and Frey have winked and nodded at the activists’ tactics.) The administration should probably re-evaluate its approach, I’ll give you that much, even though I think Trump’s aggressive instincts have basically been right so far…
The enemy must be crushed remorselessly. If the invasion of undocumented aliens from incompatible cultures is not reversed, it’s game over. You loose your country, its traditions, it’s future.Gird up your loins.
You cannot "temporarily suspend" ICE operations for a "cooling off" period for several reasons. The main reason is that there is no need to in the vast majority of the country. In Red States, where state and local law enforcement cooperate with ICE operations and where jails and courts turn over illegals in their custody to ICE without any manufactured drama, you don't have these problems. Even in the Blue Hives, like Chicago and even Portland(!) where local law enforcement is at least now cooperating in keeping the protestors from directly interfering with ICE operations even if they're prohibited from participating in them themselves, you don't have this problem.
The only problem we've got is Minnesota, where state and local officials have taken a maximalist position against doing the bare minimum to deploy state and local law enforcement under their control to maintain public order. They're the outlier, even among Blue Hives. If they would do the minimum of deploying their forces to create a boundary between ICE and the protestors to let ICE work without interference, both Good and Pretti would probably still be alive.
The revelations uncovered by independent journalists into the wide- scale fraud by Somalis and the exposure of the Signal groups that included government officials coordinating with the protestors to disrupt lawful Federal operations have me convinced that Minnesota may be a bigger, more important hub for Democratic money laundering and other shenanigans nationwide than we may have appreciated. They appear to be ready to engage in an existential struggle there to protect their interests that they aren't as worried about in the other Blue Hives.
So backing off the pressure isn't the right choice. Changing the points to which pressure is applied might be a good tactical decision, but pressure can't be relieved by a total ICE stand down in Minnesota and certainly not nationwide when there aren't any of these same problems anywhere else.
The idea of what should have been done seems correct to me. But it’s too late now. Backing down will only strengthen leftist anti-deportation agitation. Seems to me, a victory has to be gained, people obstructing ICE need to be arrested and then things will need to be quiet for a while
Maybe admin should even add an E-Verify EO, hope it gets escalated to SC, and ride coattails of SC chastened by chaos.
Here are Max's 6 points of actions Trump should have done.
1) all illegals have 1 year to leave US, 2) businesses have 1 year to dismiss illegals, 3) close border, 4) ID legal pitfalls and mitigate, 5) hire 000s of ICE agents, 6) negotiate w/state and local govs.
#1, #3 and #5 have already been accomplished. #6 is effectively what's happening now, and we see that LA, Chicago, Portland, and MN won't negotiate. #4 = pass a law saying that states/cities SHALL cooperate w/feds on immigration and outlaw sanctuary jurisdictions. I agree. #2 is the easiest for him to do and i'm surprised they haven't gone bigger on this and done an EO w/E-Verify.
I don't see where backing off does any good though. Until when? #4 is passed? W/o some other action, it would be a victory for the radical left and an admission that monkeywrenching works. I don't know to see that as a good thing.
My hunch on the 4D chess hypothesis is this - admin knows that birthright citizenship is before SC. With all the chaos, SC will not add to it and further limiting policy options and render the constitution a suicide pact. Public opinion may be souring on ICE tactics, but SC, especially conservatives, can see that a loss on BRC and enforcement generally would take us to a bad place. Public opinion will also come around at some point when people digest the implications of backing off. Would backing off even embolden more border crossers? Yes.
immigrants suck. they leech off of our resources. round them up and get rid of them!
Waaaaaaaah Liberals are drying that we’re being too mean enforcing laws we need to just give up and do nothing.
Pathetic. Please excuse yourself form politics. You do not have the will power to see this to the end.
Your take is the reason why the country is in the position that it is in, and why Republicans and the right in the West more generally have been feckless for so long: you seem to think that bad PR means we should abdicate doing the right thing and upholding the law. In the American media environment anything Trump does has been and would have been treated this way, and the midterms were almost always going to look like this -- might as well actually do the right thing when you have power. Very unsure why you seem to think the "propaganda war" is winnable for the right; most left-and-center voters are completely insulated.
It would be far worse for Trump and the Right if, after discovering all this Somali fraud, they did nothing about it. I would also argue anything less than what he's doing now would be seen as doing nothing about it.
Counterpoint
Argentina President Javier Milei: “You can’t give shit leftards a single inch… They will kill you! If you give them an inch, they will destroy you! You can't negotiate with leftists. You don't negotiate with trash because they will end you.”
Dumb article. The only way you "win the propaganda war" with the left is to do what they want. Forget the "propaganda war".
Focus on real winning: taking, exercising, and consolidating power.
Trump is very strategic in his thinking, and also quite long term actually. That doesn’t mean he’s right of course, but underestimating him is a cottage industry in this country. I think he’s targeting blue states on purpose, and for some reasons that he is not making public or obvious, as with the majority of things he does. Withdrawing the Feds from Minneapolis at this point would be the absolute worst thing to do, especially if you’re concerned about the propaganda war - it would embolden a triumphant left and further enrage and demoralize the right.
The propaganda wars is heavily rigged against anything vaguely right coded in the west.
If you back off because of bad optics or fear of whining centrists you will achieve nothing. You will merely be allowed to supervise an ever deeper exploration of collectivism.
The following could be done by EO tomorrow:
1) Task DHS with careful matching of all I-9's. Crossmatch with IRS to verify no SSNs being used in multiple places. AI could find suspicious SSN patterns in a few minutes.
2) Give employers 60 days to correct any problems.
3) After 60 days, refocus enforcement ops to be employer based.
4) Use IEEPA to restrict wire transfers to Mexico and other targeted countries.
It would all get challenged, but only #4 is legally questionable. The rest is explicitly authorized by statute. However, he can't just stop enforcement ops because protestors are being stupid and getting themselves hurt or killed. Should Eisenhower could have Arkansas get away with segregation? These sorts of violent, sanctuary states are no different.
Part of the reason the Right is willing to say "screw it, let's go for broke now" is because the Left has outright and repeatedly said that when they have the House, Senate and WH, they will use it to make sure the Republicans never win another election, by any means necessary (in their case, that includes lawfare.)
When someone tells you they're going to try and throw you in prison because they dislike your politics, the rational response is to seek to destroy them first. Whether they admit it or not, illegals are a key component of the Left's political machine: as extra census bodies, as protest cannon-fodder, and some as illegal votes.
You're right. They could do a lot more administratively even w/o E-Verify. Trump falls for the shuck and jive from the "bidness" crowd too often.
The problem with going all-in with the most aggressive approach imaginable is that this works only when public opinion is unequivocally on-side. The Right still acts like the 2024 election was a landslide victory, but it wasn't, not by PV or EV. They had a very narrow margin for error and first Trump does this stupid tariffs thing (which hasn't actually been as catastrophic as anticipated) which almost undid all the goodwill he managed to create for himself.
If, for example, Thailand decided to do mass deportations, I guarantee you nobody would care because the Thai people understand you don't show up uninvited. America isn't Thailand, we have lots of people who think illegals are contestants in a game show to see who can remain the longest in America without getting caught.
Trump got away with mass deportations in 2025, but I think doing it in Blue states was always risky. I think Trump in many ways wanted to trigger a confrontation to display supremacy over the Left, but I don't think he anticipated Renee Good would be stupid enough to sacrifice herself at the altar of illegal immigration. Of course, anyone who understands the enemy wasn't surprised at all over what happened. I'm honestly surprised it didn't happen sooner.
I'm also beginning to sour some on Steven Miller. If my suspicions are correct, he, along with Kristi Noem, are the ones pushing this hardline approach, which even Tom Homan, a true professional, apparently opposed. The problem with Miller is that he's an ideological thinker and ideologues are dangerous. I suspect he wants an insurrection to happen so they can crush it. But this is such a dangerous game to play.
I was actually agreeing with you that there are better ways this could be done. Which is why I think this is only loosely about immigration policy.
So far, Both the Dems and Trump think the deportation chaos is advantageous. Trump thinks it makes him look strong (and for his base, he's right.) Walz and the Dems think the bad PR is hurting Trump (and they're right.) This stops when either group questions whether it's 1) worth it in lives; 2) really politically beneficial.
If Trump were a strategic thinker -- his name would be Vance, but let's leave that aside -- he would make a primetime announcement tomorrow:
"The chaos in Minnesota is terrible. Truly terrible. Worst we've seen. And those 2 lives, protestors lives, that were lost... they shouldn't have been there. They were keeping us from removing the worst of the worst, the child rapists and murderers, and those two protestors shouldn't have been there. And bringing a gun to an ICE protest, what was that guy thinking? So effective today, I've decided that since the elected leadership of Minneapolis seems to want illegal child rapists and murderers roaming their streets and is encouraging their citizens to obstruct ICE, we'll give them what they want. ICE street operations will cease and so will all federal money to the state of Minneapolis. I don't want to do street operations. So anytime they want their federal highway money, and Medicaid money, and education money restored, they can partner with us to turn over arrested illegal aliens directly to ICE from the jails. Then there's no more need for street operations, and we can restore Minneapolis to the great city -- it truly was one of our greatest before the Leftist radicals took control -- I want to see Minneapolis restored, and we're ready to partner with the state to do it. But as long as they want to pretend federal law doesn't apply in Minnesota, we won't be sending them any money. It's really too bad."
Come on, can't you hear his voice saying it?
I agree; I can hear his voice saying it! He's giving both sides what they want while also retaining his bottom line. Most important, he's putting the ball in Walz's court, which is where it belongs. I doubt the guy's really the brinksman he seems to think he is. If all federal money except for, the FAA - so the airports can function - is cut off, at some point, the pain will set in and Minnesotans will direct their outrage towards the man it should've always been directed at - Walz.
Of course, Walz could prove to be a real bad-ass and simply give no fucks and his base might love him for it. Even then, crisis averted, maybe Republicans can draft legislation to boot Minnesota from the union, since they're effectively no longer part of it, anyway.
Unfortunately, the Trump administration is staffed by Claremont and Heritage-types who think Abraham Lincoln was their guy. They won't go for it and Steven Miller absolutely won't go for it.
Perhaps Mr Dreher can send the idea up the pipeline? It sounds good on the surface but as someone on a live chat this morning wrote ‘the right treats politics like a football game, the left treat it like a holy war’. If our leaders don’t start understanding who the left is and act accordingly it will be them and us in the gulag.
As always, I respect your take on really any issue. But I profoundly disagree with your assessment of illegal immigration.
Broadly speaking, the administration’s aggressive approach is the right one for one simple reason: the only way they’ll ever achieve mass deportations is via self-deportation. And the only way to encourage self-deportations en masse is to convince illegal immigrants everywhere that Trump means business. Accept the carrot of a $3,000 check, a free repatriation flight, and a tenuous chance to re-enter the country the right way, or you’ll get the stick of aggressive law enforcement action.
Sitting back for a year to train up ICE might make sense in a perfect world, but there’s too many entities who benefit from illegal immigration to justify the delay. Too many corporations, small business owners, NGOs, and state and city governments rely on illegal immigration to grease their wheels. (I’m thinking cheap labor, public funds, and congressional representation.) If the administration only has unified government for two years (history suggests that Democrats will reclaim the House), it makes no sense to burn half your time in power training ICE agents for a mission that might never see the light of day. The status quo remains intact unless Trump does something comparatively radical, like what we’re seeing today.
That being said, I agree with you that the administration’s current approach—flooding sanctuary cities with ICE agents—suffers from diminishing returns. Perhaps they could assign new recruits to friendlier jurisdictions? Working in a place like Minneapolis must be exhausting and demoralizing—they’re engaged as much in crowd control as they are in executing warrants! And whenever ICE overreacts to the activists (many of whom purposefully blur the lines between legitimate protest and direct action), the only clips that gain traction are the ones that make ICE look awful.
Perhaps you’re right that law enforcement needs to take a backseat to other means re: tackling illegal immigration. ICE has gotten too loud and unnerving for the average citizen. The administration needs subtler methods to achieve its aims: make an example out of employers who hire illegal labor; deny funds to sanctuary cities; incentivize state governments to let ICE into the prisons, to get the worst of the worst out of the country.
ICE’s presence in Minneapolis strikes me as a political vendetta more than anything, even though the local government frankly brought it on themselves. (I utterly despise Walz and how he and Frey have winked and nodded at the activists’ tactics.) The administration should probably re-evaluate its approach, I’ll give you that much, even though I think Trump’s aggressive instincts have basically been right so far…
There is no evidence the Border is closed, or that deportations are occurring.