Both the right and left in America celebrate the tradition of welcoming immigrants who wish to assimilate and become productive members of the American nation. But America has another great, if forgotten, tradition: Deporting migrants who refuse to do either.

The American people gave President Donald Trump a mandate to carry out the largest deportation of illegal aliens in U.S. history. This is shocking, but not surprising to people familiar with the finer details of that history. In fact, the U.S. leads the world in deportations, having booted out over 57 million non-citizens since 1882.

Removing millions of unwelcome foreigners is as American as apple pie.

In the past few weeks alone, Trump’s administration has already detained thousands of violent illegal aliens. Prioritizing the most dangerous criminal aliens makes sense, but even non-violent illegal migrants cost American taxpayers, disrupt our society, and take jobs from American workers.

In 2017, Trump began his first term underwater with the public on his immigration and border policies. Yet after four years under the radical left's rule and Joe Biden's suicidal open-border policy, majorities now support mass deportations and finishing the border wall. That window of opportunity won't last forever.

My new report reveals how past presidents gave us the blueprint to remove America’s 15 million or so illegal aliens through a combination of immigration-enforcement raids and self-deportation. If President Trump follows their lead and carries out his mass-deportation program, the policy will be perhaps his most significant and far-reaching political achievement. 

Over-immigration has always burdened American taxpayers, posed security threats, and harmed American workers’ job prospects. The U.S. experienced these problems separately during the 1850s, the 1910s, and the 1930s. Across these specific eras, the U.S. chose different solutions to solve its over-immigration issues—each with different lessons for America in 2025.

The Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s brought 1.5 million Irish immigrants to the U.S., disrupting and overburdening Boston in particular. Disease, crime, and mortality consequently skyrocketed in the city, and thousands of immigrants became public dependents straining social services.

Just as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, during the Biden administration, sent migrants who were overwhelming border towns packing, Massachusetts authorities did the same by deporting them back to Canada—the original landing place on the American continent for many of the Irish immigrants who subsequently entered the U.S. The Bay State ultimately deported around 50,000 non-citizens—which, given its small population in the 1800s, is roughly the equivalent of the U.S. deporting its 15 million-odd illegal aliens today.

The second mass deportation episode came after millions of Europeans immigrated during the late 19th and early 20th centuries from regions rife with political turmoil. This created, on American soil, a breeding ground for leftist, revolutionary anarchism that prefigured our own modern breeding ground for Islamic terrorism imported from the Middle East. 

President William McKinley’s assassin in 1901 was a second-generation Polish-American who became radicalized after reading Polish socialist literature, joining immigrant anarchist clubs, and attending immigrant anarchist rallies. Similarly, unassimilated second-generation Americans have carried out many of the Islamic terror attacks on U.S. soil over the past 15 years.

The Trojan horse many of these immigrants represented became obvious in the 1910s with widespread immigrant-led labor riots, domestic terror bombings, and opposition to U.S. victory during World War I. Recent large-scale marches in support of illegal immigration—featuring seas of foreign flags—show the danger that unassimilated migrants continue to pose to America’s political stability.

In the early 20^th Century, Congress fixed the problem it had allowed to fester for decades by stripping subversive immigrants of the civil liberties they’d abused. In 1924, it followed with restrictive immigration legislation, hoping to spare future generations of Americans similar over-migration problems.

The third mass-deportation wave occurred during the Great Depression when Mexicans held many of the agricultural and factory jobs Americans desperately needed. Non-college-educated Americans in 2025 are all too aware that many service industry jobs they need are filled with low-wage migrants who entered through Biden’s open border.

Subscribe Today

Get daily emails in your inbox

Email Address:

In 1930, President Herbert Hoover urged Congress to strengthen deportation laws to “fully rid ourselves of criminal aliens,” including those who “entered the country in violation of the immigration laws.” He launched a successful repatriation program for Mexican immigrants, which he promoted with the slogan “Real Jobs for Real Americans.” Despite the Left’s false portrayal, his repatriation program was not costly or cruel, and almost 90 percent of repatriated Mexicans self-deported.

In each era of mass deportation, Americans had reached a breaking point over immigration and demanded the federal government cut back. Americans again passed the breaking point under Biden. Trump should follow the roadmap of past heroic presidents from both parties and listen to the people, not to hand-wringing liberals who oppose deporting even illegal aliens who have committed crimes.

America doesn’t face a choice between assimilation and deportation. Both are American traditions that strengthen our national unity and national identity. The left gave America the rotten fruits of multiculturalism in the name of "diversity," and voters soundly rejected their policies at the polls. Trump can lead America to a united, and prosperous future. The blueprint lies in America’s past.